What's the good word?

As a Scot, I have a great range of words, mostly colloquial, to call upon. Some of my favourites:

crabbit - meaning grumpy or disagreeable
stoor - meaning dust and dirt
dreich - pronounced dreech, with the ‘ch’ as in ‘loch’, meaning miserable, cold and wet (usually in reference to the weather)
wheesht - a plea for silence, like ‘be quiet’, sometimes used as part of ‘haud yer wheesht’ (hold your quiet, hold your tongue maybe as an equivalent).

I could go on for days…

Please do… these are wonderful! :smiley:

Hey, this is an English forum. :stuck_out_tongue: :lol:

Interesting words, though. Are they technically English, or Scots, or …?

Technically, they’re Scots, or derived from Old Scots.
One more:

glaikit - referring to a person, meaning not very bright, a bit dim, a bit thick.

All of the words I’ve given are in use every day all over Scotland. They’re not just words we wheel out for the tourists. That’s one of the reasons we need subtitles on some Scottish TV programmes when they’re shown in England.

Ha ha. Well, the great thing about English is that if a foreign word is useful or fills a gap in the vocabulary, it is quickly incorporated.

(I wasn’t trying to be crabbit in questioning the origin of your words. I’m just a bit of a glaikit. And I’m sure you’ve already wished for my wheesht, so I be quite now.)

You be quite what? :stuck_out_tongue:

Quite a bad speller. :blush:

Love it!
Just a wee correction of your usage…

I wasn’t trying to be crabbit in questioning the origin of your words. I’m just a bit glaikit. And I’m sure you’ve already wished for me to wheesht, so I be quite now.)

I’ll make a Scotsman of you yet. :wink:

Lawlz!

If it were Dutch…

crabbit - meaning grumpy or disagreeable

crabble… krabbel… to scratch
Though English does have “crabby” which likely either comes from crabbit or influenced it.

stoor - meaning dust and dirt

If pronounced like “store” (as two o’s would be), it means to interrupt or bug/bother. If pronounced “stoor”, (would be spelled “stoer” in Dutch), it’s something sturdy, reliable. Strong.

dreich - pronounced dreech, with the ‘ch’ as in ‘loch’, meaning miserable, cold and wet (usually in reference to the weather)

If it were pronounced “dreig” (same “g” sound mostly, but ei would be “aye”) it would mean “threaten”. If it were pronounced as you say, “drieg” (ie == eee sound), it would sound like a version of bedriegen, which is to cheat.

Since many old English words share ancestry with old Dutch words, and since English words have mixed with and borrowed from Gaelic, and since also words have come from Gaelic over France (Breton) into the Latin-derived languages, I always wonder how much connection particular words have (when/if any… I don’t think any of the words above are related but still fun to see what they’d mean if spoken here).

English has this old term… “wasseling”. Today you only hear it in Christmas songs. “Here we come a-wasseling…”
The word comes from the phrase spoken during the holidays, “Waes du hael” (this was English at the time). It means literally “be you hale” and “hale” itself is rarely seen except in the phrase “hale and hearty” (healthy).
wæs þu hæl but whatever…

Dutch is similar. The “waest” from waes (old English, “to be”) is still present in Dutch as “wees” (be, pronounced “waays” but with a hiss “s”… or like “waste” without the t). Du, which is still present in German and carried also in Latin where the Romance languages have "tu"s in them…
“hale” ultimately derives from a root word (hāl) meaning whole (which also comes from from it), and Dutch has that too: heel (whole, complete, entire).

Wees u heel! (nobody would know what that means, it’s senseless today)

Thanks for the corrections. I should have seen that glaikit was an adjective, but didn’t pick up that wheesht was a verb. :slight_smile:

Ach, laddeh, I’ll starrrrt weeeerkin’ on me glo-al Tees then!

^Juus wotch a lohtta Craig Fergusson lad, that’ll dew ye goood!

(or have fun imitating the “Vikings” in "How to tame a dragon… Viking Scots > Vikings)

Ach, we canna watch im down 'ere. :frowning:

crikey! :frowning:

I preferred him when he was Bing Hitler.

Off Topic:

Ah yes, Godwin’s law prevails again. :lol:

EDIT: oops, we’ve gone way off topic. Feel free to delete these OT posts, Linda.

What? And have everyone miss all the fun. You just want me to take our your spelling error and I WON’T do it. :stuck_out_tongue:

how about ogre? hehehehe

my favorite word is “lalla”
it means a nerd without brains

how about dummy guys? its means a variable.

atrocious means extremely cruel or wicked; ruthless