Scottish Word of the Week: Dreich - Scotland's most common way to describe the weather

A tourist enjoying one of Scotland's fine 'views' during dreich weather. | Canva/Getty Images

The Scots language - and Scottish vernacular - has a huge range of descriptive and colourful words that are unique to the country.

When it comes to weather there is a particular embarrassment of riches; from drookit (soaked with rain) to smirr (a particular kind of persistent drizzle), via flaggie (a particularly large snowflake).

But there’s one word that rules the roost when it comes to evoking the predominant weather of Scotland - dreich.

In recent years it’s topped a number of polls to find the favourite Scots word, including those carried out by the Scottish Book Trust and YouGov.

So, what exactly does it mean and where does it come from?

Here’s what you need to know about this most Scottish of words.

What does dreich mean?

The most common usage of dreich in modern Scotland, as defined by the Cambridge dictionary, is simply to describe “wet, dark, unpleasant, weather”. As in: “It’s awfy dreich oot there the day, I think I’ll just hurkle-durkle” (hurkle-durkle means to stay in one’s bed).

But dreich can be used to mean anything that’s tedious or dreary, from a particularly bad performance from the Scottish football team, to a hard-to-follow debate in the Scottish Parliament.

In Robert Louis Stephenson’s famous novel ‘Kidnapped’ a character’s lonely and dull life was described as being “a bit dreich”.

And in Alexander Gray’s 1924 publication ‘A Book of Poems’ the word is evocatively used in the line: “In the cauld dreich days when it’s nicht on the back o’ four.”

Where does the word dreich come from?

The word dreich is thought by language experts to date back to the 15th century and was at one point used as a compliment to describe a person who was “patient, long-suffering, stoical, steadfast and resolute”.

Further back it’s thought to have arrived with the Angles who came to Scotland in around 600AD and the Old Norse word ‘drjúgr’ which means ‘enduring, lasting’ - which, in fairness, is a fairly accurate description of Scottish rain on a driech day.

It’s usage has become progressively more negative over the centuries and has been used to lambast everything from long-winded speeches and sermons to those who are slow to pay back their debts.

Dreich is pronounced ‘dreech’ with the ‘ch’ sound identical to that used in the word ‘loch’.