A few Scots words for today, starting with
Doup.
Hands up if you knew it meant the bottom section of an eggshell? No, I didn’t either. It also means the buttocks or the bottom end of anything.
Similar spelling, but quite different meaning: dour. It means hard, from the French dur, obstinate, sullen, grim, determined, taciturn, and generally difficult to chat to. It’s a very Scots word, but you’ll find dour people all over the place; a lot of them are jobsworths, the people who delight in telling you “you can’t do that there ‘ere” and “it’s more’n my job’s worth”.
Another wonderful word for the less-than-cheerful is dreich (pronounced dree-ch, not dry-ch), with the emphasis on the “ch” sound. Most English folk struggle with the “ch” sound in Scots, until you tell them it’s just like the “ch” sound in German, when they suddenly find they have no trouble at all pronouncing it. Get a good glottal CHHH on it – and suddenly the word is seriously onomatopoeic. It means cold, dreary, gloomy, grey, unwelcoming weather, much like today’s: not quite raining, not quite snowing, not quite freezing. Just dreich. A good day to stay indoors with a book.
Doited is another good one, and the similar doilt (or doiled) and donnered. The first means senile, in one’s dotage; the second means crazy, foolish, and the third, stupid or dull-witted. Another useful adjective for someone stupid is donsie, which also means sickly and has two further, obsolete meanings: “unlucky, perverse”, and “neat,trim”. Neat/perverse/sickly/stupid… how did the meaning change so much? One of life’s little mysteries.
None of those words would have been considered polite by the Dominie, the schoolmaster or tutor. In US dialect, apparently, a dominie was a clergyman. In Scotland that’s the Minister (often pronounced meenister) and he lives in the Manse. When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister he was often described as a “son of the Manse”. Being a Minister in the Cabinet must have seemed normal to him: his father was a Minister in the Church of Scotland (politics – religion – let’s not go there).
To end on a happier note, every large Scots house used to have a doocot or dooket, home of the household doo flock. These were pigeons (doves, doos) that were bred for eating through the winter, usually as squabs – youngsters, before they flew much and became tough. Usually the doocot was free-standing in the grounds, but Huntingtower Castle, just outside Perth, has one built into the top storey, accessed from a walkway on the roof. This was a brilliant idea if you were ever besieged: you couldn’t exactly take a daunder (walk, potter) down the garden under those circumstances, but you’d stand a fair chance of reaching your dinner up on the roof. Neat.
On which cheerful note, it’s supper-time. There’ll be more Scots words later – it’s a gloriously rich language. If you’ve enjoyed these examples, let me know below.
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