The Scottish National Dictionary defines breenge as “to rush forward recklessly or carelessly; to plunge; to make a violent effort”. This just shows how very difficult it is to define Scots words with a puckle English ones. As some of the quotations in the Dictionary show, there may even be a degree of gallusness associated with breenging. For example, in Liz Lochhead’s Tartuffe (1985), we read: “Ah cry it a dampt disgrace That a naebody should tak the maister’s place! To breenge in here, a raggity bare-fit tink, Wi’ the bareface to tell us whit to think”. This nuance appears again in A. Kennedy’s Orra Boughs (1930): “Or shall I breenge on, and at the end o’ livin’ be able to say ‘I've lived’?” To breenge can also mean to drive others headlong as in this childhood memory from John Crawford in Some bits o’ Scotch verses (1893) “D’ye min’ oor glorious snawba’ fechts At nicht when skule met skule? Tho’ whiles the ‘Mice’ wad chase the ‘Rats,’ An’ breenge them doon the hill”. As a noun, a breenge is a clumsy rush, hence the advice included in T. W. Paterson’s (1915) Auld Saws: “It’s better to gang canny, an’ gang shair,...Than tak the causey, bashin wi’ a breinge, An’ fa’, an’ brak yer taes”. It can also mean a blow or a punch as evidence by this incitement to violence in A. S. Neill’s Carroty Broon (1921): “Gie him a breenge in the neb, Peter!” If you do something aw at a breenge, you do it on impulse and if you mak a breenge at something you have a stab at it. As James S. Adam says of his Gaelic in New Verses for an Auld Sang (1995): “after many years of striving with the grammar and spelling, today I just take a deep breath and mak a breinge at it”.

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