This comes from Middle Dutch ‘koot' or Middle Low German ‘kote'. A well-turned ankle was appreciated by Henry Ochiltree in Redburn (1895): “Did ye notice how jimp she's aboot the waist? how trig aboot the kits?” and by Burns in The Duchess of Gordon (1789): “She kiltit up her kirtle weel To show her bonie cutes sae sma”. If you are ‘oot at the cuit' you have sprained your ankle. The anatomical extent of the cuit seems to have been metaphorically extended to the foot. We read in David Lindsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis: “I can mak schone, … Gif me the coppie of the Kings cuittis”. Also, Allan Ramsay in the The Tea-Table Miscellany (1733) writes: “The sadle's nane o' my ain, An thae's but borrowed boots; And whan that I gae hame, I maun tak to my coots”. ‘Tae cule yer cuits' translates into English as ‘to cool your heels'. The word can refer to a horse's fetlock as in this instruction in Samuel Colvil's The Whigs Supplication: “Rub my horse belly, and his coots”. The meaning of the derivative, cuitikins, is made clear in Sarah Tytler's Miss Nanse (1899): “It was no trouble ... to brush into spotlessness the gaiters or ‘cuitikins' he had flung down”. According to Walter Scott in The Antiquary (1816), they seems to have been used with robust outdoor wear: “He exchanged his slippers for a pair of stout walking shoes, with cutikins, as he called them, of black cloth”, or with more formal outdoor dress as in the Brechin Advertiser (1873): “His antique costume consisting of a black silk hat, a scarlet coat and vest trimmed with lace, black-corded knee-breeches, white ribbed stockings, and black cloth “cutikins.” The word cuit seems to be dying out, so please get in touch if you still use it.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries.