Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines Arran water as a “jocular name for whisky distilled legally or illicitly in Arran” and cites this conviviality from James Stirrat’s Poems and Songs (1843): “Spend two hours o’ social clatter, Out owre a glass o’ Arran water”.
Suffice to say that if someone calls you a tumfie, they don’t mean to flatter… Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines tumfie as, among other things, a “dull, stupid, lumpish person, a dolt …”.
Riddy appears under reid in Dictionaries of the Scots Language and is defined as having “a blushing face from embarrassment; the cause of such embarrassment”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) defines feartie as a “coward, timorous person” and notes the combined form “feardie-coward” from Watson’s Roxburghshire Wordbook (1923).
Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) gives many senses for this word, ranging from “to plunge or thrust (a thing) into a (liquid), to submerge quickly” to “set down suddenly and heavily, to plump, plank, or slap down” and “to hit with a thump, punch”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines macallum as “an ice flavoured with raspberry juice”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) describes wammelling as: “Of the stomach or its contents: to roll, to stir uneasily, rumble queasily”. It gives other definitions too, but for this piece we will stick with the stomach and its contents.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) defines smool as: “To slink, sneak, go about furtively “ or “To behave obsequiously, to curry favour, to fawn, wheedle, ingratiate oneself, especially in the phrase ‘to smule in wi’, to cajole (a person), to ‘suck up to’”.
The earliest citation for this phrase in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language comes from John Galt’s Annals of the Parish (1821): “To admonish the bride and bridegroom to ca canny”. It is defined as “to proceed warily, to be moderate”.
This is not to suggest that we are a nation of complainers, but Scots does have some very good complaining words, and this is one of them.
