Couthie is related to ‘uncouth’ and ‘unco’ in that their common origin lies in Old English ‘cuth’ (known). From there, the meaning of couthie expands to include notions of familiarity, intimacy domesticity and security. Strangely, couthie does not appear in Scots until the early eighteenth century, although it occurs in Layamon’s Brut, an English poem written at the very beginning of the thirteenth century. There it is used in collocation with a word meaning ‘male relatives’ and seems to imply trustworthiness. Its earliest appearance in the Dictionary of the Scots Language comes from the Poems of Allan Ramsay (1721): “Heal be your Heart, gay couthy Carle, Lang may ye help to toom a Barrel”. Rather rowdy couthieness is also present in Anna Blair’s Scottish Tales (1987): “It was to Tibbie Shiel's Inn that the great men escaped for a few days' retreat on their own, or to meet up in cheerful company with others of their kind. In her day Lady Stair might have been the famous formal hostess entertaining the Capital's literati in her gracious apartments overlooking Edinburgh from the Royal Mile, but, in these days of the 1820s there was gustier, couthier laughter under Tibbie's eyes”. Freedom from the discomfort of social constraints is couthie as in Rob Ringan's Plewman Cracks (1897): “Your Sunday braws dinna sit sae coothie on ye as your ord'nary moleskins that's tash't wi glaur”. Couthie could be informal but it is also neat, snug or modestly prosperous. There is a tendency to denigrate the homespun. The Herald (21 Sept1999) laments: “From the music halls emerged the sentimentalised and tartanised caricature of the Scot ... mouthing comic songs and couthy sayings”. More often, however, there is great affection expressed in and for the word couthie, which, like so many Scots words, refuses to be nailed down to a single English equivalent.

This article was written by Chris Robinson of Scots Language Dictionaries. www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk

This week's word is spoken by Gordon Beange.