FASHIOUS, adj.

Scots has quite a few words for things that are

“troublesome, annoying, irksome; of a task, tricky, ticklish”

or, as further defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language,

“Fractious, peevish, fretty, especially of children; fussy, fastidious”.

This word certainly has a distinguished pedigree. An early example dates back to 1531 from Boece’s The History and Chronicles of Scotland:

“It wer bot ane faschious and vane laubour”.

And later (1737) we have a somewhat sexist example from Allan Ramsay’s A Collection of Scots Proverbs:

“A reeky house and a girning Wife, will make a Man a fasheous Life”.

Ringing true even today, in 1779 Dougal Graham expressed this frustration in his Collected Writings:

“If it be not easier to deal wi' fools than headstrong fashous fouks”.

Equally heart-felt, in Hert’s Bluid (1995), David Purves writes:

“Sum meisterie haes maerk't ye out apairt frae ither weimen, ti synd awa aw fashiousness an hael ma hattert [battered] sowl”.

Who says we Scots can’t be romantic.

Later, Rab Wilson perfectly captures the anxiety of anticipation in Dancin in the Waitin Room, from Chuckies fir the Cairn (2009):

“Aa oor leevin Is in waitin. In these moments We fuin oor myriad selves: Anxious, hopefou, tremmlin, Wishfou, fearfou, fashious.”

Finally, a recent example comes from Peter Reid’s Doric Column in the Press & Journal from March 2024, recalling the town worthies of his youth:

“We hid affa couthy thochts aboot mony; a pucklie [few] were gye perjink; a pucklie were a thochtie orra [odd]; a pucklie fashious; an a pucklie affa ill-naiturt.”

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

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