A stairheid rammy was, indeed, originally a quarrel between neighbours dwelling in Scotland’s tenements and the earliest example we have in the Dictionary of the Scots Language www.dsl.org.uk comes from the Herald of 5th November 1994: “Stairheid rammies have continued into the third and fourth generations, and the only possible “extirpation”, namely banishment, has been removed so all that is left is to deal with each incident as it arises.”

Quarrels between neighbours seem to have been a feature of Scottish tenement life and stairheid rows have been recorded as early as 1938 as this example from the Dundee Evening Telegraph of 26 September of that year shows: “A “stairheid” row at 58 North William Street, was recounted at Dundee Police Court this morning”.

Language, however, is fluid and always shifting meanings so the stairheid rammy has taken on a figurative slant as this example from the Daily Record of 10th February 2017 shows: “A late night stairheid rammy in the Commons on Monday as the SNP complained bitterly about being talked out of the Brexit debate”. And this figurative element also passes into the world of football as Aidan Smith writing in the Scotsman of 14th August 2016 tells us: “A fair old stairheid rammy, then, and Walker can count on more choruses of disapproval at away grounds when his ban is over, but how can such incidents be cut out the game?”

So the original use of the term seems to have been taken over by a description of any quarrel between footballing or political opponents.

Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel of Scottish Language Dictionaries.