TORN-FACE, v., n.

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.

GIGOT, n.

As chefs and foodies are no doubt aware, gigot makes a delicious dinner choice. Defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) as

“A leg of mutton; also used of pork and beef”,

this word entered the language from French, though its ultimate origin is unknown.

[Illustration by Bob Dewar]

The term has a long history within Scots. DSL records an early use from 1791 in Mrs Frazer’s The Practice of Cookery:

“To broil a leg of Lamb: Cut off the loin and boil the gigot”.

Curious readers may even wish to try this recommendation from F Marian Macneill’s 1946 Recipes from Scotland:

“A Gigot of Mutton… Trim the gigot and rub all over with the sugar”.

In 2005 a correspondent from Edinburgh told DSL that the word was still being used by the meat industry:

“Gigot is used for pork as well as lamb and also for beef in wholesale usage”.

However, it doesn’t only appear behind the scenes. Take a look at this example from February 2022 when the Largs and Millport Weekly reported on the local ‘Ladies who Lunch’ group’s first post-pandemic meal. The menu for their Robert Burns tour at Ayrshire’s Seamill Hydro Hotel ran as follows:

“... the delicious lunch menu will be; roast gigot of lamb, with a leek & nutmeg pomme puree, braised carrots & a rich thyme-scented red wine jus followed by a meringue nest filled with vanilla cream, mixed berries & chocolate shavings”.

A wee bit fancier than our Bard would have been used to!

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

Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.

KEELIE, n.2, v.

The entry for keelie was written in 1960, which probably explains its rather prim definition in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL):

“A male city-dweller of the rougher sort, specifically of Glasgow and district, occasionally of Edinburgh, an uncouth rowdy fellow, a ‘tough’. Originally it implied thievish or criminal propensities”.

[Illustration by Bob Dewar]

The term’s origins in nineteenth-century Edinburgh can be seen in the following from the Scots Magazine of April 1812:

“He knew of a number of lads who used to meet at the bottom of Niddry Street when they came from their work … He has heard them called Keellies”.

This example doesn’t seem to show any sign of criminality. This aspect is covered in the North British Daily Mail of August 1863:

“The defender… said that I was a Saltmarket Keelie, a fighting man, a thief”.

In the twentieth century, J B Symons, writing under the pseudonym of Restalrig (a district in Edinburgh), in his At the Sign of the Sheep’s Heid (1922) gives us:

“Jist yin o’ thae Leith Coalhill keelies oot for a nicht’s batterin”.

The twenty-first century supplies us with much evidence that the term is still used even in douce Edinburgh. This example comes from a description of a lunch in the Edinburgh Evening News of December 2013:

“Tom was in steak pie mode, like me. It’s in our genes. Leith keelies do adore steak pie. We do love our scran”.

Perhaps the writer could have been better described as a former keelie.

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

Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.

SLATER, n.

One of several senses given in Dictionaries of the Scots Language is:

“the slate-coloured insect frequently found under flat stones, the wood-louse or sow-bug”.

An early example comes from this revolting remedy, recorded in E D Dunbar’s Social Life in Former Days (1736):

“Give him, twice a day, the juice of twenty slettars, squeezed through a muslin rag in whey”.

In April 1945 the Weekly Scotsman reported, possibly unnecessarily, that:

“The woodlice that lurk beneath big stones he called ‘slaters’”.

Following lockdown, this observation appeared in The Glasgow Times (October 2020):

“Creaking open the old laptop again for the first time in about seven months was a bit like lifting up a fusty plant pot from a forgotten corner of the garden and disturbing a variety of slaters, worms and other wriggling, scurrying inhabitants of such dark, damp nooks and crannies”.

A sympathetic treatment of slaters comes from the Strathearn Herald (1980) in the form of a poem by Tom Shaw to The Wood Louse:

“Slater, we slater, aye crawlin’ aboot,

In ablow staines an’ rotted tree-root,

Nae use at sclimmin’ – aye fa’ain doon!

Helpless on back, legs flailin’ abune,

Birthing live bairnies – (nae eggs for you),

Slater, wee slater, tak’ tent how ye go.”

But here’s an attitude some readers may relate to better (from Stuart A Paterson’s poem Slater in Wheen: New and Collected Poems, 2023):

“Oan the flair o ma cludgie Ah fin a slater,
it isnae there ten meenits later.
Ah’m feart o speeders an alligators,
but mair than thon Ah’m feart o slaters.”

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

Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.

RUMMLE, v., n.

At its simplest, rummle is the Scots for “rumble”. However, the Dictionaries of the Scots Language offers more: agitation, jumble, shake up, jangle etc. A rather macabre example comes from Robert McClellan in the magazine Chapman Number 43-44 (1986):

“Ye’ll hae to fill the coffin to the richt wecht wi stanes, but wrap them weill roun in case they rummle”.

More poetically, there’s this from Lillias Forbes in Turning a Fresh Eye (1998):

“‘Twixt Ruberslaw an Warbla Knowe Yince, Christopher we’d meet For ae sicht o’ the tither Asklent burn water rummlin at oor feet!”.

Brian Holton also used the word to evoke the sound of water in his prize-winning elegy In Memoriam Cyril Stanley Holton (2017):

“ye tuik the simmer’s lang white road

whaur lichtsome hills is daft wi sang

an siller watter rummles doun the linn

the herd hed come ti lead ye in

to set ye on yir auld white road”

Rummling as an aid to digestion features in a report of a party (John O Groat Journal, 1891):

“After the edibles had been consumed, a young lady was heard to say, ‘I think we’ll jist rise an try to rummle hid doon’”.

More recently, this hazard from the days of coal fires was recorded in the Daily Record (2022):

“Sometimes if we had the fire stacked up a red-hot coal would rummle right out on to the hearth”.

Finally, from Contermacious Temerity (Keeks Mc, 2023), a description of ADHD:

“It’s gie haurd fur thay wi’oot a jumblt brain
tae unnerstaun whit it’s like tae be a rummle”.

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

Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk