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Scots Language Centre Centre for the Scots Leid

STOOKIE n gypsum, a plaster cast, an effigy

This week's word is being topically typed with one hand. It comes from Italian ‘stucco' but originates in Old High German ‘stukki', a fragment. Like stucco in English, it means fine plaster, but its orthopedic application is purely Scots. The shared sense is demonstrated in the Proceedings of the Scottish Anthropological & Folklore Society (1948): “When the doorstep had been washed, the careful housewife would draw designs and patterns with white ‘stookie'.” An exchange in Alan Spence's Way to Go (1998) illustrates the Scots usage. “‘You want to be buried in a plaster cast?' I asked him. ‘Like a mummy?' He shook his head, laughed. ‘Naw! I want a box, but just a simple white job. And I want everybody to write on it, wee messages and that, drawings.' ‘Like a stookie. Right.' ‘I always mind it when I broke my arm. The things people wrote on it!'” A stookie mannie or mumie is a plaster statue. We have an interesting variant spelling from Banffshire in 1930: “The wife bocht a stooga mannie this foreneen fae a foreign-lookin bodie”. ‘Like a stookie' means immobile, unresponsive and stupified, like this character in J. L. Waugh's Cute McCheyne (1917: “I juist stood like a stookie, thowless an' donnert”.  This next gem comes from The Scotsman (2002) “So it came as no surprise when he described the Scottish Office minister Allan Stewart as a ‘stookie' at Scottish Questions. What did come as a surprise yesterday, though, was when the bods at Hansard sent him a memo, asking: ‘What is a stookie? How is it spelt? Was it used in reference to undersecretary of State?' Since we can only assume the House of Commons library has a copy of Chambers Scots Dictionary (The Concise Scots Dictionary) which defines the word as ‘foolish person; blockhead' we can only conclude that the compilers of Hansard are the biggest stookies of them all”.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries 25 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN, 0131 650 4149