As an adverb, ahint can refer to place or time. This example from Robert Ford’s Tayside Songs (1895) makes light of misfortune: “When Fortune jooks ahint An’ scuds ye wi’ her broom”. In Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermuir, ahint means ‘later in time’: “Mysie, kill the brood-hen without thinking twice on it; let them care that come ahint”. As an adjective, we find it in the sense of ‘behind’ schedule in Isabella Darling’s Poems (1889): “There was a time I channert sair like you, Oor wark ahin’ and weans aye in my road”. The clock’s ahint means it is slow. The dictionary often classes as adverbs words which modern grammarians might be more inclined to view as adjectives. This is particularly the case where the verb ‘to be’ is involved as in W. A. Scott’s article on the Vernacular of Mid-Nithsdale, in the Transactions of the  Dumfries and Galloway Antiquarian Society (1925): “Hurry up, we’re gaun tae be clean ahint”. If we think what other words we might put here, we see that ahint is really not an adverb. We might say ‘We’re gaun tae be slow’, but we could not say ‘We’re gaun tae be slowly’. When it comes to recognising parts of speech, we are on safer ground with prepositions, but even here some of the senses may be unfamiliar. The usual sense is ‘behind’, as in ‘ahint the dyke’, but in the north-east, it can also mean ‘after’, as in ‘ahint thon cairry-on last week, ye wadna ken whit tae expect’. It is in the north-east too that we find rare examples of ahint used as a conjunction. This startling one comes from Donald Campbell’s Kirsty’s Surprise (1930): “I’ve gotten snippets o’ ’t, but, ahin auld Leebie yokit tae gie me the news, she crackit the plate o’ her fause teeth on a pan-drop I gied her”.

If you are not sure about prepositions, adverbs and conjunctions, there is now an introductory, illustrated grammar book written to celebrate Scottish Language Dictionaries’ first 10 years: A Modren Scots Grammar: wirking wi wirds, written by Chris Robinson, and published by Luath