Hoatchin is often used of crowded, bustling situations. Last September, a discussion of our national cuisine in the Aberdeen Evening Express commented that 'Scotland is hoatching with some of the best raw ingredients in the world'. And in James Miller's A Fine White Stoor (1992), there is a description of 'Every leaf, every blade, every stalk. Hotching wi sap and peedie chloroplasts, aa sooking in water and air and belching oot carbohydrates.' The verb hotch may be related to Dutch hotsen, hossen 'jog, jolt' and German hotzen 'move up and down', though connection with French hocher 'to shake' has also been suggested. There is one example of the word in a fifteenth-century Middle English text, where it appears to mean something like 'attack'. In Scots, its earliest known uses are recorded in a handful of texts from the sixteenth century, and it means 'jerk, jostle'. In a sonnet written to Alexander Montgomerie, Hugh Barclay described himself 'hotching on a sped (spade), Draiglit in dirt, whylis wat evin to the skin'. Later uses of the word refer to other forms of agitation and restlessness, as in R. W. Mackenna's Bracken and Thistledown (1923): 'I min' hoo my faither used tae hotch aboot in his sate, like a waukrife wean wi' the colic till the minister wad mention the de'il', and in S. Macplowter's Mrs McCraw (1903): 'Maist fowks is aye hotchin' tae get at what's nae concairn o' theirs'. Texts from the eighteenth to at least the mid twentieth century record people hoatchin with glee. Technical applications of the word also exist - in the north of England mine-workers would at one time have been familiar with 'hotching tubs', mechanical sieves that agitated the ore from the waste material. But were hotching tubs also used in Scotland? If you know, we'd be delighted to hear from you.   This week's Scots word was written by Dr Maggie Scott.