Scots language, if you ken whit ah mean?

Published on Monday 24 April 2006 07:26

BACK in the 1970s teachers used to love beating the Scots language out of us.

There are two major dictionaries of Scots words, the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongues (DOST), which records words in use from the twelfth century through to about 1700, and the Scottish National Dictionary(SND) which traces modern Scots from 1700 to the 1970s.

Many words from Old Scots survive in common use today. DOST dates the word gey, or goodly or fine, to the 16th century. (It is also spelled gei, guy, gae, gay(e), gie or gai.) The term gey now more usually means rather and expressions such as gey glaiket remain in common use to mean rather stupid. Glaiket itself dates back to the 1700s and means foolish or senseless.

If you were to call someone gey glaiket, you might cause something of a stramash, or commotion. The first written record of stramash is thought to date back to 1803. Lewis Grassic Gibbon used the word in his novel Sunset Song and John Buchan, author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, was also unafraid of the odd stramash.

After a stramash you might begin to feel scunnered. The noun scunner is found in DOST and dates to the 1660s. It means disgust, revulsion, loathing or a source or cause of this, a stomach upset or a sinking feeling.Scots love nothing better than to talk about the weather and dark and overcast, or rainy days are often described as dreich or dreigh. Many Scots think dreich literally means wet, but DOST dates the word back to the 13th century and defines it as extensive, lasting, tedious, tiresome or slow.

The word midden, which according to the SND was first recorded in 1717, was used by many great poets including Robert Burns. The word started life meaning dung heap, then later refuse or rubbish heap. Nowadays it is also used to describe a mess.

Deek is still in use today and means to look at a person. Early recordings of the word started in the 1780s.

So having taken just a wee deek at some of our Scots words, why not test your own knowledge. Our simple multiple-choice quiz will soon let you know whether you're a true-Scot or just a bletherer.

1. Haud yer wheesht!

Hold that sausage!

Shut up!

Have you had your tea!

What a terrible person!

2. High Heid yin

A brainy person

A dreamer

The most senior ranking person

A tall fellow

3. Lang may your lum reek

What a terrible smell

Have a good night's sleep

Long may your lump smell

May you always be prosperous enough to have fuel

4. A sair fecht

A sore fight - meaning something disappointing

Not a nice person

A doomsayer

A dangerous situation

Check out the answers and see how you did.