Knapdarloch
This lovely descriptive word, used mostly in the Northeast, is defined by the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) as:
“A lump or chunk of any solid substance, especially a knot of hardened dirt, dung, or matted hair, hanging from the coat or tail of an animal”.
DSL continues:
“As a term of abuse; an undersized, dirty cheeky fellow”.
In William Grant’s Scots Anecdotes of 1885, we have:
“It’s nae a stone ava but a knapdaerlick that hung at ane o my stots’ [bullock] tails a the last summer”.
An even less pretty picture is glimpsed in the following example from Helen Beaton’s At the Back o Benachie (1915):
“His hair hings in knapdarlochs, like a coo’s tail clortit wi ile”.
DSL also gives a quotation from an Aberdeen correspondent from 1929:
“The beggar wis a sair sicht, her raggit claes wallopin in knapdarlochs as she hobble’t awa”.
More recently, it appeared in the Press and Journal (August 1995) - although it clearly needed some explanation:
“Look up the P&J (July) an ye’ll see the wird I used wis ‘knapdarlochs’ an yer face I doobt will noo be the colour o the turkey cock. They’re nae a bonnie sicht”.
And later, again in the Press and Journal, the following letter was published (March 2017):
“Supervising them is the new Meat Hygiene Service and a host of inspectors whose cost is exceeded only by their patent ineffectiveness… We are still at the political point-scoring stage, and the TV luvvies have discovered stirks sporting knapdarlochs”.
This Scots Word of the Week was written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.