Author Topic: Useful Scots Words  (Read 14071 times)

Barbara

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 543
Useful Scots Words
« on: March 23, 2011, 08:31:15 PM »
Hello everyone!  Sorry I've been missing in action.  I was reading an online Scots newspaper and ran across some old Scots words so thought I would share some.  :D

Tonight's word is "keek."

From the Caledonian Mercury

Useful Scots word: keek

March 21, 2011 by Guest Writer

By Betty Kirkpatrick

I was in a bus the other day when a toddler was attempting to get the rest of the passengers to join in her game. She was covering her eyes with her scarf, then removing it and shouting out “keek”.

Most of the passengers took part with enthusiasm, even those who obviously had no idea what keek means. Still, they got the essential message of the game, which in Scotland is called keek, keekboo or keekaboo and in England peekaboo.

The game is derived from the Scots verb keek, which means to take a quick look at something. The quick look often involves some degree of secrecy, inquisitiveness, or surreptitiousness. A nosey neighbour might keek through a chink in the curtains to see what their neighbour is up to. A would-be cheat might try and keek at someone else’s answers during a school test.

Keek can also be a noun, with meanings corresponding to that of the verb. Thus, before venturing into a restaurant, you might try and get a quick keek at the menu so that you can make sure that there is something on it that you will like – and be able to afford. Fortunately, many restaurants now take the surreptitiousness out of keeking by displaying the menu in the window.

If you decide to keek in on someone you pay them a short visit, often unannounced. This visit is known, not surprisingly, as a keek. Remember that not everyone is enthused by such unscheduled keeks.

Keek, which is pronounced as it is spelt, appeared in Scots in the late 15th century. It is derived from Middle English kiken or keken and has connections with Dutch kijken, to peep or look.

Keek has given rise to various compounds or phrases. Keekin-glass is a looking-glass or mirror, reminding us of those vain people who cannot pass anything shiny without having a quick keek to check on their reflection. A keek-hole is a peep-hole, a chink in something through which an inquisitive person can keek in order to satisfy their curiosity. Rather poetically, keek o’ day is dawn or sunrise and keek o’ noon is midday.

A keek-the-vennel is a nickname given to a school attendance officer who was out to identify truants and bring retribution to them. A vennel is a lane or an alley. Presumably the attendance officer was always taking quick looks up such alleys with a view to glimpsing those who should have been safely behind their school desks. In similar vein, a keek-roon-corners is a spy, roon meaning round,

The best-known derivative of keek nowadays is keeker. This originally referred to a person who keeks and was particularly used of a peeping Tom. It then went on to mean the eye, the organ that is keeked through. Keeker is also used to refer to a microscope, a far-keeker being a telescope.

However, these are violent times and the most appropriate meaning of keeker for such times is black eye, sometimes known as a blue keeker. Allegedly, such keekers are most commonly caused by walking into doors.

Keek o'night everyone.  ;D

Barbara
"Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

Ernest Thompson

  • Core
  • *
  • Posts: 96
Re: Useful Scots Words
« Reply #1 on: March 23, 2011, 09:22:34 PM »
Good one Barbara. Down under we've translated "keek" to "geek'.
As kids we would always nominate the most junior amongst us to take a quick geek to make sure the way ahead was clear.
Ern

John ThomsonHollingsworth

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 110
Re: Useful Scots Words
« Reply #2 on: March 24, 2011, 03:23:54 AM »
Great one Barbara.
Its great to learn new words
John

Barbara

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 543
Re: Useful Scots Words
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2011, 10:28:54 PM »
Good one Barbara. Down under we've translated "keek" to "geek'.
As kids we would always nominate the most junior amongst us to take a quick geek to make sure the way ahead was clear.
Ern

LOL!  I like "geek" too Ern.  ;D

Barbara
"Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

Barbara

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 543
Re: Useful Scots Words
« Reply #4 on: March 28, 2011, 10:34:37 PM »
Another useful Scots word: Wersh

Wersh is a Scots word which is often used in relation to food. It is not the kind of word that you would find on a menu because it is far from complimentary. Something described as wersh is unlikely to tempt the diner’s appetite.

Wersh has two food meanings and this can lead to ambiguity. Usually the distinction between two meanings is obvious from a context, but this is not necessarily true of wersh. It can, for example, be used of soup in both its meanings.

The older of the two food meanings can be used of soup that is pretty tasteless, being decidedly lacking in flavouring or seasoning. In some cases it is almost impossible to identify what kind of soup it is meant to be.

This older meaning is quite closely related to the Middle English word werische, meaning insipid, from which wersh was formed. The other meaning, and the more modern of the two, is used to refer to food that it is unpleasantly tart or bitter. For example, you could describe soup that has lingered rather too long at the back of your fridge and developed a disagreeable sour taste as wersh.

Soup is by no means the only item of food or drink that can be described as wersh. The old (well, let us hope it is old) British way of overcooking vegetables until they turned to slops resulted in something that was decidedly wersh in the sense of tasteless. Flavourless sauces optimistically intended to improve the taste of fish or meat but failing lamentably to do so, can be called wersh.

In the days before there were health scares about salt, unsalted porridge was often described as wersh in the sense of tasteless. Flat beer also sometimes merited the term.

Cheap (or not-so-cheap but overpriced) wine, the kind that burns your throat and stomach and all parts in between, is often referred to as wersh in the other sense of unpleasantly sour. Salad dressings which are heavy on the cheap-quality vinegar and light on the extra-virgin olive oil can also be labelled wersh.

The sour sense of wersh is the more modern and said to be the more common nowadays. However, quite a few people still use the tasteless meaning. The ambiguity remains. All you can be certain of is that you are unlikely to find something described as wersh as palatable unless you have an unusual liking for the bland or the sour.

Barbara
"Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

Mary

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 997
Re: Useful Scots Words
« Reply #5 on: March 29, 2011, 07:15:55 PM »
Wersh..........it could apply to the last couple of weeks I've had!   :D

Good stuff, Barbara!  Welcome back! ;)

Barbara

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 543
Re: Useful Scots Words
« Reply #6 on: March 31, 2011, 11:55:06 PM »
Useful Scots word: shilpit

by Betty Kirkpatrick


Those of you who are peelie-wally, which I have just written about, and are not pleased with this look, can easily do something about it. The quickest solution is to invest in some fake sun tan so that you can look stripy instead.

If you are also shilpit the situation calls for more drastic measures. Shilpit is a Scots word meaning thin and puny and is frequently used as a term of insult. The shilpit look is not a good look if you are a man.

Time was when men just ate more porridge and did a few muscle-building exercises in the privacy of their own home to try to cure themselves of their shilpitness. Now many men spend a lot of time, money and effort in gyms in an attempt to build up their abdominal muscles (known as abs) and achieve the six-pack look.

The shilpit look, however, is absolutely fine, and, indeed, encouraged, if you are female and relatively young. It is a look particularly sought-after by those who dream of walking down the catwalk. However, the actual word shilpit is not used in this case. It does not sound nearly glamorous enough to play a part in such a world.

Shilpit now is mostly used with reference to people who are lacking in physical stature, but it can also be used of people who lack courage or boldness. A timid or cowardly person can be described as shilpit. Who can blame the physically shilpit if they leave the heroics to the big guys?

The word shilpit can also be used to refer to liquids which, like shilpit people, have not much body. Thus, wine which is thin and rather tasteless can be described as shilpit. A liquid which is sour or bitter or lacks freshness, such as milk beyond its use-by-date, can also be said to be shilpit. In both of these meanings shilpit bears a resemblance to wersh (see previous article).

People who are particularly shilpit often have rather sharp, drawn features and this could have some connection with the derivation of the word. The origin is uncertain, but shilpit may be an altered from of shirpit which means thin and shrunken with drawn features. Shirpit, in turn, may have its origins in shairp or sherp, Scots equivalents of English sharp.

As I mentioned above, shilpit is often used as an insult. If you want to be even more insulting you can describe someone as a shilpit wee nyaff, but enough for now of nyaff. It deserves a starring role in its own right.
"Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain

Sis Thompson's oldest

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 228
  • Sis Thompson at 16...
Re: Useful Scots Words
« Reply #7 on: April 02, 2011, 09:03:40 AM »
"See you, ya wee nyaff if ye dinnae bugger aff yer gettin' a bash in yer moosh!" (From Firstfoot.com)

There's a sentence I'll be trying to work in to conversation soon.    ..bugger aff, indeed!
Sherry :D
The bad news? There is no key to the universe. The good news? It was never locked.

Barbara

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 543
Re: Useful Scots Words
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2011, 11:12:01 AM »
 ;D  Good one Sherry!  Scots language is so colorful.   ;D

Useful Scots word: mawkit

March 9, 2011 by Guest Writer
 
By Betty Kirkpatrick

I have commented before on the fact that Scots is rich in words relating to dirt. One of these words is mawkit.

Now there is dirt and there is dirt, and mawkit lies at the filthy end of the dirt scale. Commonly also spelt maukit and sometimes mockit, mawkit is a two-syllable word pronounced as it is spelt with the emphasis on the first syllable which rhymes with law.

There is often more than a hint of exaggeration in the use of mawkit. People and things so described may not be quite as dirty as the word suggests. Mawkit is often used of children and certainly, even in these days of over-protection, some children have a propensity to get absolutely filthy. They can rightly be described as mawkit. However, a few smears of chocolate on the face and white shirt do not really merit the use of mawkit.

Similarly, houses and cars have been known to be described as mawkit, when really all they are in need of is a bit of a dust and dicht (a quick wipe). Mawkitness, like beauty and so many other things, is in the eyes of the beholder.

Given its meaning, mawkit is obviously anything but a pleasant word and, appropriately, its background is far from pleasant. It is derived from mawk, which came to Scots from Middle English, and probably has its origins in Old Norse. A mawk, or mauk, is a maggot.

For the sake of those unfamiliar with maggots, they are soft, pale-coloured, worm-like creatures which are the larvae of flies. They are often to be found in rotting meat and other unsavoury things. They also inhabit corpses which have been left lying around and this gets them a mention in a lot of crime fiction these days. Apparently, forensic scientists can date the time that has elapsed since the death of the corpse by assessing the stage of development of the maggots. Gruesome, but true.

Rotting meat and abandoned corpses can literally be described as mawkit. As well as being a noun meaning a maggot, mawk can be a verb meaning to infest with maggots. In English, both the past tense and past participle of regular verbs is formed with the ending “ed”, but in Scots this often becomes “it”. Thus mawkit literally means infested with maggots. Sheep are apparently martyrs to this problem when they get maggots embedded in their flesh.

Rotting meat, corpses and sheep are not the only things that could rightly be described literally as mawkit. Raspberries, for example, can become infested with maggots and so become mawkit. I once had a close encounter with some mawkit raspberries when I was working in a long-closed small canning factor during a university vacation.

We were told that the contents of any baskets of raspberries showing signs of maggots should be emptied into special containers. Cynics claimed that the contents of these were then boiled up and had the maggots skimmed off before being made into jam. Did I believe this? Of course not.

Barbara
"Kindness is the language the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain