Torn-face
This handy term is defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) as
“(a person with) a sulky peevish face. Hence torn-faced, sulky, glum”.
A surprisingly recent coinage, the first citation is from a correspondent in Angus in 1968:
“What a torn face ye’ve got”.
[Illustration by Bob Dewar]
DSL has many examples from the 1990s. The following from For Ever Yours Marie-Lou by Martin Bowmen and Bill Findlay (1994) is intriguing:
“We’re too auld tae start this cairry-oan again…You take it fae me, torn face, you’ll be eatin smoothy peanut butter fae noo oan! If you’re waantin tae feed that wean’s face, you better start saving the cents!”.
In 1998, Gordon Legge wrote in Near Neighbours:
“As she headed back to her desk a great big woman with a right torn face came storming in”.
However, the term is still very much with us. A writer in the Daily Record back in January 2005 remarked:
“Say to a taxi driver: ‘No I can’t guess who you had in the back of your cab last week, and what’s more, I don't care.’ Guaranteed tight lip and torn face for your entire journey”.
A similarly evocative description appeared in the National in June 2022:
“There’s something typically Scottish about this man. Maybe it’s his sense of unbridled resentment at the hand the world has dealt him, maybe it’s the way he has the same torn face for everyone he speaks to, maybe it’s because he has not so a chip as an entire fish supper on his shoulder”.
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.