Pirlie
The Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) offer a couple of interesting meanings for pirlie, each independently derived from the verb pirl, which means to twist, curl, or roll.
[Illustration by Bob Dewar]
The first of these,
“a small curled thing”
or
“anything very small”
is applied to the pinkie finger in the words pirlie, pirlie-winkie, or pirlie-winkle. An early example comes from C. I. Johnstone’s Elizabeth de Bruce (1827):
“Ye ken Tam could thrash you wi’ his little pirlie”.
The second is found in pirlie-pig,
“a money-box, generally circular in shape and made of earthenware, with a slot for inserting coins”.
This comes from a specific sense of the verb – to maneuver a “small object by a series of pokes and prods”.
The term has a long pedigree, with DSL’s earliest example coming from James Thomson’s History of Dundee (1799):
“Old women and children kept their pozes [savings] in their kist neuks and pirly pigs”.
William Allan uses the form pirlie in Rose and Thistle: Poems and Songs (1878):
“Put your penny in the pirlie, Dinna spen’ it noo; See! It’s just a haudin’ ferlie, Haudin’ till it’s fu’.”
In February 2025, the Border Telegraph reported on a new platform from Historic Environment Scotland (HES) which allows users to explore heritage objects online:
“Some of the gems from the Borders available to explore on trove.scot include the pirlie pig, a medieval piggy bank on show at Melrose Abbey.”
You can find several surviving examples of pirlie pigs on the website (in various states of repair).
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Collops
According to the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), collops are,
“thickish slice[s] of meat”.
You can also find
“minced collops, slices of meat minced before cooking.”
[Illustration by Bob Dewar]
The term has a long pedigree in Scots, with DSL’s first citation coming from The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie (a1508):
“Thow beggit … Collapis, cruddis, mele, grotis, grisis, and geis [You begged for … collops, curds, meal, groats, pigs, and geese].”
Another early citation comes from David Fergusson’s Scottish Proverbs (a1598):
“It is a sairie collope that is tain off a capone”.
This proverb must have proved popular, as Andrew Henderson also records a version more than two hundred years later in 1832:
“It's a sary collop that's taen aff a chicken”.
Of course, today’s chickens are much heftier than the ones Fergusson or Henderson would have encountered.
In March 1830, the Aberdeen Press and Journal concluded its report on a successful boar hunt with a reference to the
"ancient method of roasting [boar] whole, and the more modern method of cooking in a collop, with wine sauce, as practiced at Naples and elsewhere”.
In November 1956, the Montrose Review noted:
“Now that venison is plentiful and cheap in Montrose and in the best condition at this time of the year, here is a recipe for Venison Collops, which is as economical as it is appetising”.
More recently in April 2016, the Herald listed
“traditional Scottish fare like cabbie claw, collops, rumbledethumps, and cullen skink”,
demonstrating how the dish persists into the twenty-first century. Long may it continue!
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Morningside
As recorded in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), this term has been used disparagingly to:
“describe the over-refined, supposedly affected speech of (some of) the inhabitants [of Morningside, Edinburgh], and also their behaviour, attitudes, etc”.
[Illustration by Bob Dewar]
The earliest example in DSL comes from Lowland Scots (1973), a collection of essays edited by A.J. Aitken:
“The Scottish Augustans seem to have bequeathed us an inferiority complex and the Morningside accent”.
In May 1999, The Sunday Times noted:
“Edinburgh is the least Scots place. That Morningside accent sounds like a Swede trying to talk Surrey”.
Then, in December 2002, The Herald observed that:
“The difference between a Morningside accent and a Kelvinside accent is that Glasgow is a funny city, where people are very demonstrative and Edinburgh is a very undemonstrative city where there’s not much humour”.
Finding earlier evidence is always a challenge, but we can get back to February 1953 where The Scotsman published an exchange of letters on the topic of ‘affected speech’:
“J. A. A. points out that affectation is not as easy to recognise as it is to condemn, and goes on to give an example of the ‘Morningside’ boy whose natural speech is an echo of his affected parents. He asks: Is the ‘Morningside’ boy's speech affected or unaffected? But why presume that the speech of the parents is affected when the Morningside accent has unfortunately been going strong for three generations or more?”
Will this accent ever catch a break?
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Gauger
This term for an exciseman comes from the verb gauge, defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) as:
“To ascertain the content of a cask, generally of liquor; to perform the duties of an exciseman”.
[Illustration by Bob Dewar]
As many of you will know, Robert Burns was an exciseman in his later career and riding out to collect taxes in all weathers may have hastened his early death – to say nothing of the medical treatments of the day.
An early mention in the DSL comes from 1721 in The Minutes of the Justices of the Peace for Lanarkshire:
“Greivances of the brewers . . . in relation to their paying in of money to the gadgers . . . for payment of their excise to the collector thereof.”
Moving on to poetry, Allan Ramsay in his Tea-Table Miscellany (1726) wrote:
“When malt-men come for siller, And gaugers with wands o’er soon”.
Burns also records the term in his Epistle to Dr Blacklock (1789):
“But what d’ye think my trusty fier? I am turned a gauger – Peace be here!”.
Leaving the eighteenth century behind, we find the following in George Abel’s Wylins fae my Wallet (1916):
“The maister scauls [scolds], exceptin fin the gauger looks in-by”.
Yes, always be polite to the taxman.
Is there any recent use of the term? Sort of. It survives in the name of a mountain-bike trail near Tomintoul called Gauger’s lookout. There was also a Gauger Bar in Seagate, Dundee.
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Nicky tam
Nicky tams are described in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) as:
“a pair of straps, or a piece of string in lieu, tied by farmworkers over the trousers-legs immediately below the knee to keep the legs clear of the soil and dust, etc., blowing up or relieve the weight of mud at the ankles”.
[Illustration by Bob Dewar]
The earliest example in DSL is taken from Elsie S Rae’s Private John McPherson and other War Poems (1917):
“An’ Geordie, ma foreman, a dacenter lad Ne’er wore nickietoms, nor plooed up a fleed [The land at the end of the furrows in a ridge on which the plough turns, the end-rig]”.
The Statistical Account from East Lothian in 1953 gives the following information:
“It was characteristic of the ploughman to secure his trousers round his legs immediately below the knees by a narrow buckled strap or thong. These attachments were known in this part of the country as nickie tams or bow yanks”.
In 1998, we have the following from Ian Cameron’s The Jimmy Shand Story:
“… proudly brushed down his new moleskin trousers, making sure they had their own knee strings to make nicky-tams”.
The term is still remembered in the twenty-first century, but requires explanation, as this memory recalled in the Daily Record of July 2021 attests:
“He would always be wearing nicky tams – working trousers tied at the knee with cord – and tackety boots. The sparks would be fair flying off the road when he tramped down to the Cross Keys”.
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.