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See awthin in Scots

SWEIR adj reluctant

1 week, 1 day ago

Sweir covers a range of senses including slothful, inactive or unwilling to make an effort. People have not changed much since 1490, when John Irland wrote in  the Miroure of Wyssdome: &ldq...

HAUGH n a piece of level ground

2 weeks, 2 days ago

Haugh, sometimes spelt hauch, also appears in Older Scots as halch. It usually rhymes with loch, but in some dialects the final consonant may disappear. It is a piece of level ground,...

INCH n island

3 weeks, 2 days ago

Inch comes from the Gaelic innes and is familiar to us in place-names.
We find it as such as early as 1198-9 in the Latin of the Lindores Charter: “totam insulam que vocatur Redinche...

BRAT n apron, rags

1 month, 2 days ago

Brat used to be a common word but is now rarely heard. It comes from an Old Northumbrian loanword of Celtic origins meaning a cloak. Robert Henryson at the end of the fifteenth century used it t...

MIDDEN n dunghill, refuse heap

on 03rd Feb 2010

This word comes from Old Norse. We can reconstruct the probable form ‘myki-dyngja’. Quotations in the Dictionary of the Scots Language show contrasting pictures of rural and urban mi...

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