Cosh in Scots is not an offensive weapon for bashing victims over the head. Quite the contrary. It is a couthy and comfortable adjective applicable to everyone’s favourite things. The dictionary tells us that it means snug, comfortable and cosy and the example provided by J. Christie in the Banffshire Journal (1906) confirms this with an apt simile: “Soon after nine they socht their den, As cosh as hoggies in their pen”. The warmth of a Scotttish welcome glows in Robert Nicoll’s Poems and Lyrics (a1837): “Wha tauld us stories, sad and lane, O’ puir folk’s waes, until we wished Them a’ beside our cosh hearthstane”. A different but equally snug cosiness nestles within J. Ballantine Gaberlunzie’s Wallet (1843): “For ilka shepherd’s chequered plaid Has room enough for twa, And coshly shields his mountain maid Frae a’ the blasts that blaw”. Such gallantry can extend the sense of cosh to express a sense of intimacy as in this quotation from J. Lumsden’s Doun i’ th’ Loudons (1908) “Engaged? Hang it, I canna say for that, But, I could threep the deil they’re unco cosh!” Cosh can cover a range of relationships including unsavoury ones. One such is found in the Scots Magazine (1788): “Auld Cloots and you are unco cosh”, and J. J. H. Burgess in Rasmie’s Smaa Murr, (1916) warns “It’s no safe for kyunnins (rabbits) ta be ower kosh wi whitrits (ferrets)”. Another sense of cosh refers to a warm and expansive stage of inebriation. In William Liddle’s Poems on Different Occasions (1821) “Rab had got a gay bit drappy...Was very cosh and unco cracky”. Galts’s Annals of the Parish (1821) describes even “Decent ladies, coming home with red faces, tozy and cosh, from a posset masking”.

We do not have any examples of this word dating from later than 1937 and would be interested to know if anyone still uses it.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries.

This week's Word is spoken by the well known Dundee singer Sheena Wellington.