Dottle
In the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) dottle has many meanings. One of them is:
“a very small person”.
This usage has quite a long history, with an example in DSL dating from the Letters of Thomas Carlyle to his Brother (1844):
“A little useful ‘dottle of a body’ already working for its little bit of bread there”.
I came across it again in an extract from an obituary (Daily Record, January 2012):
“Ruby was one of the most amazing people I have ever met. A tiny little dottle of a woman, she had the heart of a lion.”
More recently, it appeared as the nickname of a band member in The Southern Reporter (August 2022):
“For professional recording, Jimi enlisted fellow Gala man, drummer/percussionist and Soundstation studio owner David ‘Dottle’ Little to help with the project, while final mastering took place at Precise Mastering, Hawick”.
This usage is probably an extension of another meaning of dottle for a “particle, a jot”, which is also still current - as evidenced in Thomas Clark’s translation, Animal Fairm (2023):
“We are born, we are given jist sae muckle scran as will keep body and soul thegither, and thon o us that are able tae are garred tae wirk tae the last dottle o oor micht”.
Then there’s a variant I’m not so sure how to interpret! It comes from Sheena Blackhall’s poem The Check-Oot Quine’s Lament in Blethertoun Braes (2007):
“Mealie jimmies, ganzie, Cheque, or caird, or cash, Ma dowp is dottled sittin, Grip, skyte, flash.”
This Scots Word of the Week was written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Fleg
I heard this used recently in the context of someone getting a fright. In the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) it is defined as:
“a fright, a scare”.
This sense comes relatively late to DSL. Earlier use was mainly as a verb, exemplified in James Melvill’s Diary and Autobiography (1600):
“When courtlie wolffes from Chrystes flok be flegged”.
DSL’s first citation of the noun comes from Ramsay’s poems (1721):
“Has some Bogle-bo Glowrin frae ’mang the auld Waws gi’en ye a fleg”.
Examples are plentiful from the nineteenth century, including this very modern-sounding one from Sir Walter Scott’s Rob Roy (1818):
“I got a fleg and was ready to jump out o’ my skin”.
Published in 1945, Violet Jacob’s poem Neep-Fields by the Sea gives us:
“I’ the lang rows plantit atween the wa’s, A tattie-dulie for fleggin’ craws I’ the neep-fields by the sea.”
And some years later, another Scottish poet, J.K. Annand, used fleg in the sense of ‘to scare away’ in his poem Snaw (Selected Poems 1925-1990, published in 1992):
“Ach lassie, show some pitie, I’m dowie, and I pyne. Tak me to your hert And fleg the winter hyne.”
Fleg is still in use. In 2021, Gregor Steele featured it in a humorous poem for children:
“Betty the Vampire Slagger, Widden stakes they wir nae use, She like tae fleg the undeid, Jist by giein them dug’s abuse.”
Finally, the Courier of December 2022 celebrated local Scottish customs emphatically:
“We go guisin’, an’ gi’e fowks a fleg, no a fright”.
This Scots Word of the Week was written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Girnal / Girnel
In a domestic context, a girnal is
“a large chest or barrel for holding meal”.
It is also
“a granary, a storehouse, especially one belonging to an estate”.
I was reminded of the word in a Christmas and New Year greeting I received once, which ran:
“May the best you ever see, Be the worst you ever see, May a moose ne’er leave yer girnal wi a tear drap in his ee”.
I have no idea when this rhyme dates from, or even if it is specifically a Festive thing or just a general toast.
Although girnal is listed as obsolescent in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language, it does still turn up. For example, in this sorry situation described in Anna Blair’s Scottish Tales (published in 1987):
“At last he was rewarded with the total failure of crops for harvest ... not an ear in the field, and no more than a handful of meal in any girnel”.
And in 2001, the word was clearly still well enough known to form part of a Crossword clue in The Scotsman:
“Hint of grit in new girnel makes her complain (7).”
More recently, the Highland News (July 2019) reported on a restaurant whose name, The Storehouse, reflects the building’s former use:
“The restaurant and shop selling farm produce and gifts is in a fully restored 18th century grade A listed girnal or granary, the finest remaining example of what used to be a familiar type of building dotted along the coasts of Easter Ross and Sutherland”.
This Scots Word of the Week was written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Threap
Threap has a long pedigree. Its root is from Old English þréapian, to rebuke, and Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) records various meanings in Scots:
“to argue, dispute, quarrel”, “to assert, insist, maintain obstinately”,
to
“nag at, be insistent, importune, urge some action upon”.
There’s a vivid depiction of quarrelsomeness from John Carruthers’ A Man Beset (1927):
“That auld threapin’ bubblyjock Targelvie.”
DSL also gives an example of a meaning some may argue is typically Scottish,
“to beat down a price, haggle for a reduction in charge”.
It comes from John Wilson (Christopher North) in Noctes Ambrosianae (1827):
“I wad hate to dine wi' him at a tavern — for he wad aye be for threepin doun the bill.”.
More recently, the word featured in The National (March 2018) in an article which still resonates today:
“Dr Andra Mackillop … telt me at the picket line: “This threap owre pensions is yet mair pruif that the structures o oor public services are being dung doon. University high heid yins consider their ain staff as nae mair nor financial liabilities, an students as piñata fu o siller tae be dunted at will”.
Threap is still very much in use, as this example (meaning “to harp on in general, keep talking endlessly about”) shows. Keeks Mc’s poem A Great Breetish Simmer (2023) depicts a typical family holiday:
“The wather, which locals threap wis glorious til theday, is chilpy, gowsterie an gray makkin a mockery o aa the haliday-makkers in thair breekums and vests ‘makkin the maist o it’”.
This Scots Word of the Week was written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Bodach
In the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), bodach is described primarily as
“an old man; often used in a more or less contemptuous way … a person of small stature”.
The word comes from the Gaelic, meaning an old man.
It was also used by Scott and others in the sense of a spectre or bugaboo, and DSL gives an example from Highland Widow (1827):
“Oh! then the mystery is out. There is a bogle or a brownie, a witch or a gyre-carlin, a bodach or a fairy, in the case?”
In Herd [Shepherd] of the Hills (1934), Allan Fraser implies both smallness of stature and contempt:
“He told of how Alicky Mag, the daft wee bodach that he was, had been taken away at last”.
In what sense he was taken away is not stated.
Moving into the noughties, Davie Kerr’s A Puckle Poems (2000) has:
“Then up sprang an old bodach, (who’d been dying almost daily). ‘Come in’, he beamed a welcome, ‘and we'll haff [sic] an early Ceilidh’”.
As recently as June 2022, an old joke appeared in the Press and Journal recounting an elderly man’s visit to his doctor for a check-up. The next day the doctor spies the gentleman with a young lady on his arm. Says the doctor:
“‘You’re doing really well…’. The bodach said ‘Well, I am only doing what you told me to. You said to get a hot mama and be cheerful.’ The Doctor replied, ‘No… I said you have a heart murmur so be careful.’”.
This Scots Word of the Week was written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.