Begowk
Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines begowk as meaning
“to befool; to jilt in courtship; to slight a woman”.
An early example of the befool usage comes from Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel of treachery and skullduggery, Kidnapped:
“Ah, but I’ll begowk you there!”.
Earlier still, there is this from a prize-winning short story published in the Dundee People’s Journal (1858):
“Confoond the auld leein vagabond! Gien me a bony begowk I trow!”
Later, William Neill’s Making Tracks and Other Poems (1988) gives us:
“I kent thay wad begowk ye in the end for aw yir gesterin aboot the toun tae mak daft lauds an glaikit lassies geck”.
Billy Kay listed several synonyms in the St Andrews Citizen (1993):
“For cheat you have a choice of chate, begowk, begunk, blink, wick, sconce, nick, jouk, quirk and pauchle…”
We have limited evidence for the jilted sense. However, it was noted as a usage from Peebles by John Jamieson in his 1825 Etymological Dictionary of the Scots Language. And in the same year we find this in the Belfast Commercial Chronicle:
“… the meenister was wantin’ to begowk the young leddy … it behoved us to remonstrate wi’ him on the subject… how surpreezed we a’ war, that he should think now o’ breakin’ aff his engagement.”
The word has even made it as far afield as the Nigerian newspaper This Day (2021).
“An electorate so gullible A people plain malleable And completely begowked You wonder how it worked? They’re one and all of a kind Stricken by poverty of the mind.”
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Fashious
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.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Chookie
The Dictionaries of the Scots Language gives a range of meanings for chookie. Today we are focusing on chicken or bird.
An early example comes from John Service’s The Memorials of Robin Cummell (1913):
“They leeved [lived] on milk and meal wi’ whyles a fat chookie boiled in their kail”.
Later, in 1985, we have this from Elizabeth Case writing in Original Prints, New Writing from Scottish Women:
“‘Ah well, who’s for a bit of chookie birdie then?’ he said brandishing the carving knife”.
Those two examples undoubtedly refer to chickens, but this, from the Herald in 1997, references birds in general:
“This is a man who knows Eigg like no other, having surveyed every square inch of it in a ceaseless quest to observe and record the life and times of thousands of wee chookie birdies who call the place home.”
Also from the Herald (2019) - a reminder that it pays to read the ingredients
“…I grabbed a frozen meal... promising tender minced lamb and vegetables in gravy, topped with sautéed potatoes… in fact, there’s just 13% of the meat in the meal. And its so-called chicken hotpot is even skimpier, with just 9% chookie.”
Finally, from Thomas Clark’s poem for kids, Nae Pets Allowed (Dinnae Mak Me Laugh, Scots Hoose 2021):
“I’m no allowed tae hae a dug, (Ma Maw thinks they’ve got fleas.) A sparra or a braw wee sprug, (They’d mak ma Granda sneeze.) … I’m no allowed a chookie-hen, (Their cleuks get awfy maukit.) I’m no allowed a tod, ye ken, (I’d need a lead tae walk it.)”
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Hirple
Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines this as
“to walk slowly and painfully or with a limp, to hobble; to move unevenly, as a hare”.
Margaret Calderwood recorded this uncomfortable departure in A Journey in England, Holland etc. (1756):
“He hirpled round to all the company, and wished them good-night".
Moving perhaps not so swiftly on, this comes from Robert Fergusson’s poem Leith Races (1773):
“Great feck gae hirpling hame like fools, The cripple lead the blind”.
Clearly a good time was had.
In her 1952 novel with the intriguing title Lobsters on the Agenda, Naomi Mitchison wrote:
“I’ve seen him often enough hirplin’ round, him and his stick”.
And later hirple appears in Sheena Blackhall’s Wittgenstein’s Web (1996):
“Ah, bit the meenister hidna seen (or mebbe he hid but chuse nae tae notice) auld Bunty Strachan hirplin up an doon stairs frae her mither’s bedroom ...”.
In 2017, Sheila McNab wrote to the Sunday Post (Dundee):
“In his Word On The Words column, Steve Finan states: ‘Nothing rhymes with month, orange, silver or purple.’ I beg to differ – the Scottish word hirple rhymes perfectly with purple. I remember hearing my Scottish grandmother use the word from my Glasgow school days.”
The word is still in use. John Nicolson recorded in the Alloa and Hillfoots Advertiser of February 2023:
“Some of you may have noticed that when I’m out and about I’m hirplin a bit. And for the last few weeks, I’ve been using a stick. I have succumbed to that widespread Scottish curse, arthritis”.
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Hurdies
Defined by the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) as
“the buttocks, the hips, haunches, of human beings and animals”,
this word has a long pedigree. An early example is found in Sir David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (1540):
“Of hir hurdies scho had na hauld”.
Later, in Burns’ Tam o Shanter (1790), it appears again:
“Thir breeks o’ mine, my only pair… I wad hae gi’en them aff my hurdies For ae blink o’ the bonie burdies!”.
In Neil Munro’s The New Road (1914), he conjures up an interesting sight:
“A claymore swinging plainly at my hurdies would look ridiculous”.
And we can picture the poor woman described thus in Ellie MacDonald’s The Gangan Fuit (1991):
“an there she stud - a shilpit wee craitur wi naither briests nor hurdies fit tae grace the glossies lat alane the ploo”.
Aberdeen-based author Sheena Blackhall provided us with many alternative names for the same body part in her Lament for the Raj (1995):
“His dowp, behouchie, his dock or hurdies, Are twa roon meens [moons] ower grim fur wirdies”.
Finally, in a Press and Journal article (July 2022), Moreen Simpson bemoaned the experience of waiting for a bus on a hot day:
“Sun beatin’ doon. No bench to sit on at the stop. I waited. No 23s going in the opposite direction – an ominous sign. … The lesser-spotted green thingie finally arrived, half an hour late. By then, I was near passin’ oot, hurdies achin’. Of course, the bus was packed”.
This Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.