PUGGIE, n., v.

Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) defines puggie as:

“The hole in a game of marbles into which the marbles are rolled; the bank, kitty, jackpot or pool in a game of cards or the like”

and gives the related senses of a one-armed bandit or fruit machine and a cash-dispenser.

One-armed bandits or fruit machines first appear in DSL in the following from Michael Munro’s The Patter (1985):

“... The word is also used to mean a one-armed bandit or fruit machine, and I have also heard of it being used for an automatic cash-dispenser outside a bank: ‘Ah just put ma kerd in your puggy an it swallied it!’”. 

An experience dreaded by all of us.

In the twenty-first century (2003) a DSL Edinburgh correspondent sent in this usage:

“Ah’m aye gaun tae the puggie tae tak oot money”.

We would be interested to hear if anyone has more recent published evidence for puggie meaning ATM.

The term is still in use for fruit machines. Janey Godley, writing in the Herald of February 2006, recounted:

“I like the upstairs bar at the Ubiquitous Chip in Glasgow. When I owned a pub I hated the puggie machines and blaring televisions and the Chip has neither”.

More recently and a telling sign of difficult times (again in The Herald - September 2022) the following almost elegiac observation appeared:

“Another pub taking down the darts board, emptying the puggie, sweeping under the pool table for any stray 50 pence pieces and closing its doors for good”.
 

This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.

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