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‘Dreich’ tops poll of favourite Scots words (2013)
- dboreham 7y agoA word that comes in handy from time to time here in Montana since there is no equivalent English word. But I'd place "wairsh" higher in my favorite list. Another word with no direct English translation.
- Freak_NL 7y agoAccording to Collins the (British) English equivalent is simply 'wersh'¹. Still a Scottish loanword though. 1: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/wairsh https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/wair...
- thombat 7y agoAnd they define it as: 1. tasteless; insipid 2. sour; bitter So providing three contradictory definitions in just four words. What do you mean by it when you use it?
- dboreham 7y agoIt's to do with bitterness and definitely not tasteless. The best way to understand its definition is to imagine two people picking berries. One goes to a new bush, plucks a berry, puts it in their mouth then makes an expression indicating unpleasant taste, puckering. Their friend asks "Nae gid?" they respond "Aye, yon's offey wairsh".
- dboreham 7y agoYes I'm aware of that misspelling ;) Small sample size, but I've never heard an English person use the word and have always assumed it was archaic there.
- ggm 7y agoDo not believe Reddit's view of what the Scots think is their favourite word. (grew up in Scotland, 1960s-1970s) The C-word is not actually that common. (I don't mean "chips") However, if you learn a word from reading the immortal words of D.C.Thompson's "Oor Wullie" or "the Broons" It may or may not reflect reality. To my mind, nobody used "jings" un-ironically but an older generation did use "braw" in its true sense. And the adjective "wee" is heavily used. As in "wee dram" which means "DO NOT STOP POURING THE BOTTLE UNTIL I SAY SO"
- ironic_ali 7y agoSome numpty awa an nicked ma limbo stick oot the shed. How low can ye go...
- ggm 7y agoI always liked numpty but 'the bill' cockneyfied it.
- gadders 7y agoOne other important thing to learn about Scots English - calling a woman a "cow" is a lot worse North of the Border.
- mikorym 7y ago"Oats is the food of horses in England and men in Scotland. And where do you find finer horses and finer men?" —An old Scottish engineer who didn't like me because as a wee lad I used to ask him things like: "How do you weigh a grain of sugar?"
- jjgreen 7y agoTalking of chips, how come Scots can't cook chips? Awful soggy limp things.
- ck425 7y agoAre you comparing them to fries? Chippy chips and fries are two different things
- grey-area 7y agoWhat about dwam, as in away in a dwam (dreamworld)?
- fergie 7y agoIf you want a deep dive into modern Scots as its spoken today check out https://www.reddit.com/r/ScottishPeopleTwitter/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ScottishPeopleTwitter/ if you haven't already done so
- 3dbrows 7y agoPersonally I find that subreddit is a cringeworthy series of posts wherein people go overboard with Glaswegian patterns of speech and then label it "Scots". I wouldn't regard it as a reference for how people actually talk.
- ck425 7y agoIt's definitely more Glaswegian than generic Scottish but it's also definitely accurate!
- lb1lf 7y agoA Scot chief engineer I once worked with claimed you only needed four words in your vocabulary to keep up conversation with a true Scotsman - Aye, Nay, Fook, Shite; if you'd been to university, you could expand your vocabulary with Bastid, too. After a couple of weeks offshore with him and assorted other Scots, I came around to believing he was mostly right...
- arethuza 7y agoI got told off at my first job (in 1988) when debugging a problem on site at a religious book publishers I was apparently cursing without realising it....
- rob74 7y agoThe only word I already knew from this list is "beasties" - once again thanks to Lemmings (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2hQxtvncaQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2hQxtvncaQ) - gotta finally visit Scotland to expand my vocabulary :D
- arethuza 7y agoI'd probably go with "drookit" as my favourite Scots word - although if we allow phrases I would probably go with the greeting of "fit like" or possibly my mother's advice before exams at school to "keep the heid".
- smackay 7y agoDon't forget that Scots is generally spoken in the south. There is a rich selection of dialects around the country, notably in the the north where Norse is the strongest influence. http://www.caithness.org/dialect/ http://www.caithness.org/dialect/
- arethuza 7y agoWhen I was growing up it was possible to tell by accent whether someone came from an inland farm or from one of the fishing villages along the coast - even though the farms might only be 1km or so from the villages.
- stevekemp 7y agoThe UK is like that as a whole, the accents and dialect can vary enormously in very short distances. Even simple things like what people call rolls of bread can place people pretty accurately: https://i.imgur.com/mwoYYYQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/mwoYYYQ.jpg I call a small roll of bread a "bread-cake" because that's what my mom called it. My dad would call it a "morning roll". Now I'm an adult I can, and do, alternate between the two terms but I have a preference for my mother's term. Some words I take my mother's terms and some my dad's. So I guess there's a blending from Scotland and Yorkshire. Now raising a bilingual child who is 50% Finnish who knows how he'll talk, and what he'll call things!
- test1235 7y agoweirdest one I came across is 'oxster' ... means armpit 'piece' means sandwich, and a 'ginger' is a soft drink I like 'glaikit' (no idea how you spell that) ... it's basically a verb to be a daydreamy, dozy f*ck
- stevekemp 7y agoA better article here, with more fun words: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-50476008 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-50476008 My personal favourite Scots word is "wheesht", which I grew up hearing, to mean "be quiet now". I'm no longer in the UK, but I still find myself saying it, almost reflexively, to our boy here in Finland. He understands it just fine!
- GordonS 7y agoYou can also expand it to "haud yer wheest!", which instead is something like "shut your mouth!"
- op03 7y agoI recently discovered Still Game on Netflix. It's been my intro to Scotland :)) It's like watching Golden Girls but with old men, so much more cussing but in a Scottish accent. Turn it on when ever I need a good laugh. Highly recommended.
- DonaldFisk 7y agoI once used the word snib in conversation in England, and got blank looks. I then realized I didn't know the Standard English word. After describing one, I was told it was a latch. Other words I prefer that would draw blank looks are skelf (splinter), bike (wasp's nest), and oose (fluff).
- GordonS 7y agoAnother Scot here - and I just learned from you that snib and bike aren't used in general English!
- GordonS 7y agoA Doric phrase that people often find amusing is "foos yer doos?" - it literally means, "how are your pigeons?", and is used as a salutation like "how are you?".