James Robertson – Blood and Porridge

January 25, 2026

Favourite Scots words, W-Z

From wikipedia.org / Scottish National Portrait Gallery

It’s Burns Night this evening. In other words, it’s been 267 years exactly since Agnes Burnes (né Broun) gave birth to little Robert Burns, who would grow up to be Scotland’s greatest poet. I currently reside in Singapore and am not connected with the city-state’s St Andrew’s Society (whom I believe organise an annual Burns Supper in this part of the world), so I won’t be celebrating the bard’s birthday in the traditional fashion, i.e., quaffing whisky, listening to poetry recitals, quaffing more whisky, stuffing myself with haggis, neeps and tatties, and quaffing yet more whisky. However, I’ll make sure tonight I drink a couple of bottles of Tiger Beer to the great man’s memory in my local bak-kut-teh eatery – and will post this latest instalment in my series about my favourite words in the Scots language, the medium in which Burns wrote his poetry.

Here, I’ll cover those Scots words beginning with the final four letters of the alphabet. Actually, beginning with just ‘W’ and ‘Y’, since I don’t know of any ones beginning with ‘X’ and ‘Z’, unless you count Zetland, an old name for the Shetland Islands.

Wally (adj) – porcelain. I believe I mentioned this before when I covered the term peely-wally, meaning pale and sickly-looking to the point where the person so described is the colour of porcelain. A wally dug is a porcelain ornament in the form of a dog, while wallies is a Scots term for dentures – porcelain was first used to make false teeth in the late 18^th century and was still a component in their manufacture two centuries later. Finally, a fancy alleyway lined with porcelain tiles is referred to as a wallie close.

Wean (noun) – a young child. Wean is a blend of the words wee and ane (one). For example, Glaswegian poet Liz Lochhead’s 1985 Scots-language adaptation of Molière’s Tartuffe (1664) contains the couplet, “Can you bring the wean up well / When you’re scarce mair than a lassie yoursel’?”

Wee (adj) – small. One of the commonest and most famous Scots words, wee isn’t just used across Scotland but in the north of England and Ireland too. It’s frequently heard in my birthplace Northern Ireland, which contains its own variant of Scots, Ulster-Scots. Indeed, so fond of the word are the inhabitants of Northern Ireland that in the TV show Derry Girls (2018-22), James – ‘The wee English fella’ – remarks on it. “People here,” he cries exasperatedly, “use the word wee to describe things that aren’t even actually that small!”

From derry.fandom.com / © Hat Trick Productions / Channel 4

Back in Scotland, Scots terms that incorporate wee include Wee Free, referring to a member of the Free Church of Scotland, an uncompromising, purist and, well, wee splinter-church from mainstream Presbyterianism; the Wee Rangers, a nickname for Berwick Rangers, a considerably less well-known and wee-er football team than Glasgow Rangers – how everyone in Scotland who wasn’t a Glasgow Rangers supporter laughed when Berwick Rangers beat Glasgow Rangers 1-0 in the first round of the Scottish Cup in 1967; and wee dram , a ‘small’ whisky, though in my experience, anyone who’s offered me a wee dram has served me something not that wee. Come to think of it, I’ve heard wee drams also referred to as wee refreshments, wee libations and wee sensations. Meanwhile, the exclamation “What in the name o’ the Wee Man?” can be translated as “What in the name of the devil?” And I’ve heard a few Scottish teachers in my time refer to their juvenile charges, uncharitably, as wee shites.

Weegie / Weedgie (noun) – an affectionate, and sometimes not so affectionate, term for an inhabitant of Glasgow. I remember lending my copy of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993) to a Canadian friend during the late 1990s. When she returned it, she said, “I really enjoyed it, but tell me one thing… What’s a Weegie?” Maybe she was puzzled by the musings of the book’s hero / anti-hero, and staunch Edinburgh-er, Mark Renton, who at one point muses: ““Weegies huv this built-in belief that they’re hard done by, but they’re no. It’s just self-pity. Ah mean, Edinburgh’s jist as fuckin bad in places, but ye don’t hear us greetin aboot it aw the f**kin time.”

And I believe another Edinburgh – or Edinburgh-based – author, Iain Rankin, has written at least one crime novel wherein Inspector Rebus is sent to investigate a case 50 miles along the road from the Scottish capital in… Weegie-land.

Whaup (noun) – a curlew.

Wheech (verb) – to move very quickly or remove something from somewhere very quickly. The word features in the Billy Connolly stand-up routine about the mechanism that purportedly exists in airplane lavatories, the jobby–wheecher: a sort of “ladle on a string and it’s tucked under the toilet seat, and as soon as you close the lid… WHEECH! Away it goes.”

© Castle Music UK

Whitterick (noun) – a weasel or stoat. This word seems to exist in different forms. In my well-thumbed copy of the Colllin Pocket Scots Dictionary, it’s whitterick. But in Sleekit Mr Tod, James Robertson’s 2008 Scots translation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970), Mr. and Mrs. Weasel are rechristened Mr. and Mrs. Whiteret.

Widdershins / withershins (adverb) – anti-clockwise or in the opposite direction from the sun’s movement across the sky. This gives widdershins and the motion it denotes the connotation of being against the order of things, of being unnatural, of being unlucky and sinister. As a result, it turns up regularly in folklore and tales of the supernatural. In Robert Louis Stevenson’s short fable The Song of the Morrow (1896), when the King’s daughter and her nurse go to “that part of the beach were strange things had been done in the ancient ages, lo, there was the crone, and she was dancing widdershins.” At the same time, ominously, “the clouds raced in the sky, and the gulls flew widdershins” too.

Wifie (noun) – not a ‘wife’ as you might think, but a woman in general. However, as a conversation I’ve seen on Quora delicately puts it, it’s usually a term for ‘a woman of uncertain age, but probably past the first flush of youth’.

Winch (verb) – to kiss and cuddle or, as folk would say during the time of my misspent youth, to ‘get off with’ someone.

Windae (noun) – window. Windae-hingin’ is leaning out of the window, a windae-stane is a windowsill and a windae-sneck is the catch on a window frame you use to open or close it. Yer bum’s oot the windae is an abusive phrase, basically meaning, “You’re talking rubbish.” And don’t ask about the politically incorrect term windae-licker. This landed maverick Scottish politician George Galloway in hot water when he reacted to a Glasgow Rangers-supporting critic on Twitter with the retort: “You badly need medical help son. Will decent Rangers fans please substitute this windae-licker…?”

© The Belfast Telegraph

Wynd (noun) – like its counterpart Scots words close and vennel, this refers to a narrow lane or alleyway. Though most of the narrow side-streets and alleyways that cut off from the sides of Edinburgh’s historic Royal Mile are called closes, a couple of them have wynd in their name, for example, Bell’s Wynd and Old Tollbooth Wynd,

Yatter (verb) – according to the online Collins Dictionary, this word’s roots are Scottish and it means ‘to talk idly and foolishly about trivial things’.

Yestreen (noun) – yesterday evening or last night. In Robert Burns’ poem Halloween (1785), the granny tells young Jenny, ““Ae hairst afore the Sherra-moor / I mind’t as weel’s yestreen / I was a gilpey then, I’m sure / I wasna past fifteen…”

Yoke (noun) – obviously, this is the crosspiece placed over the necks of a pair of horses or oxen when they’re made to pull a plough. But in a couple of Sots dictionaries, I’ve seen this described as a term for a motor car. I’ve never heard it used in this context in Scotland, though I did so plenty of times in Northern Ireland. An old friend of my father’s once told me that, in his youth, my old man was famous, or infamous, for the cars he drove – they weren’t sleek, fancy or flashy, but the very opposite. “Aye,” mused the friend, “he drove some right clapped-out oul yokes.”

Yous (pronoun) – unlike standard English, Scots differentiates between the second-person singular and plural personal pronouns. Talk to one person, it’s ‘you’ (or ye). Talk to more than one and it’s yous.

And with that… I will wish yous all a merry Burns Night.

P.S. This should be the end of my posts about the Scots language. But, looking at previous entries, I’ve realised there are loads of other Scots words I’ve forgotten to mention. So, in the future, there will undoubtedly be further entries in which I start again at ‘A’ and try to cover all the omissions.

From pixabay.com / © Makamuki0

January 26, 2025February 4, 2025

Favourite Scots words, T-V

From unsplash.com / © Edward Howell

Yesterday was January 25^th and yesterday evening saw a multitude of whisky-and-haggis-fuelled suppers held across the world to honour the 266^th birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet and one of its most distinguished writers in the Scots language. This is an appropriate time, then, to publish the latest instalment of my list of favourite words and phrases from Scots. I’m getting near the end of the alphabet now – the items in this post begin with letters ‘T’, ‘U’ and ‘V’.

Tablet (n) – a sweet foodstuff peculiar to Scotland, described by one culinary website as ‘crumbly, buttery fudge’. Actually, I remember tablet being hard rather than crumbly. At the end of its cooking process, it’d be a big solid slab in a tin, which you then cut up into little blocks. It was also unhealthily laden with sugar, so obviously it became a popular Scottish treat. In fact, in a short story I wrote a couple of years ago, I referred to tablet as ‘that tooth-rotting, Scottish confection of butter, sugar and condensed milk.’

Tackety boots (n) – hobnailed boots, the tackety bits being the hobnails.

Tappit hen (n) – originally a hen with a crest, although more recently it’s become the term for a type of pewter tankard or jug, with a lid, and a little knob on the lid. I remember from my youth how the Tappit Hen was also the name of a pub in Aberdeen and, if my memory serves me correctly, it had a little nightclub called ‘Roosters’ upstairs. Ha-ha, Roosters… On top of the Tappit Hen. Get it?

Tapsalteerie (adj) – upside down.

Tattie (n) – a potato. Potatoes are a staple of the Scottish diet – see the ubiquity of the dish mince an’ tatties. If you get work on a farm picking potatoes, you are said to go tattie howkin’. And there’s a savoury snack in Scotland, a wedge of potato flatbread that goes very nicely with a fried breakfast, called a tattie scone.

© Grove Atlantic

Tattiebogle (n) – a scarecrow. In Douglas Stuart’s novel Young Mungo (2022), set in Glasgow in the early 1990s, Tattiebogle is the nickname that the title character, 15-year-old Mungo Hamilton, and his sister Jodie give their mother whenever she’s on one of her (frequent) alcoholic benders. That’s when she seemingly transforms into a deranged, subhuman horror.

Tawse (n) – also known as ‘the belt’, a tawse was a strip of leather that had a sadistically forked tail and was an instrument of corporal punishment in Scottish schools. Misbehaving pupils would be brought to the front of the classroom, made to stand with one hand outstretched and the other hand supporting it under the wrist, and given ‘six of the belt’, i.e., half-a-dozen whacks from the tawse across the palm. Thanks to a judgement against its use by the European Court of Human Rights, the tawse disappeared from Scottish schools in the early-to-mid-1980s – making folk my age the last schoolkids to have been terrorised by it.

Teem (v) – to pour (with rain). I’ve seen this included in lists of Scots words but I’ve only ever heard it used in Northern Ireland, where a lot of those words ended up. “Ach, it’s teemin’!” my mum, who hailed from near Enniskillen, would exclaim when the heavens opened and rain started pounding us.

Teuchter (n) – a derogatory word used by Lowland Scots towards a person from the Highlands and Islands (often one who speaks the Scottish Gaelic language). In Robin Jenkins’ 1979 novel Fergus Lamont, the title character describes the word as “the most contemptuous name a Lowlander can call a Highlander: it implies, among other things, heathery ears and sheep-like wits.” I’ve also heard Aberdonians use teuchter in reference to anybody from the surrounding countryside of North East Scotland.

The day / the morra / the nicht (adv) – today, tomorrow and tonight. The nicht is immortalised in the saying It’s a braw moonlicht nicht the nicht (‘It’s a beautiful moonlit night tonight’), which comes from a song called Wee Deoch and Doris by the popular Scottish music-hall performer Sir Harry Lauder. The song includes the lines: “There’s a wee wifie waitin’ in a wee but an’ ben / If you can say, ‘It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht’ / Then ye’re a’richt, ye ken.”

Thirled (adj) – being bound to something, by law, by contract, by loyalty or by habit. John Buchan’s novel Witch Wood (1927), whose action takes place in the 17^th-century Scottish Borders, contains the questioning line: “Or were they so thirled to their evil-doing that his appeals were no more than an idle wind?”

Thrapple (n) – the throat or windpipe.

Thrawn (adj) – stubborn, obstinate and bloody-minded, inclined to do the opposite of what everyone urges you to do. However, there’s a macabre short story called Thrawn Janet (1881) by Robert Louis Stevenson, in which the word has a different meaning – ‘twisted’ or ‘deformed’. The title character is described as having “her neck thrawn, and her heid on ae side, like a body that has been hangit…”

Tod (n) – a fox. The Scottish author James Robertson once translated Roald Dahl’s children’s book Fantastic Mr Fox into Scots, where it sported the more Caledonian-friendly title Sleekit Mr Tod.

Trauchle (v) – to walk slowly and wearily.

Trews (n) – tartan trousers, once worn by Scotland’s southern regiments and regarded as a traditional garment of the country’s Lowlands (although in reality, like kilts, trews originated in the Highlands). I’ve heard it said that trews were the prototype for the tartan plus-fours that golfers used to wear.

At modern Scottish gatherings, kilts tend to vastly outnumber trews, although I can think of a couple of famous people who had a liking for this form of Scottish legwear: the late Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014, who once got involved in a stushie when he went on an official visit to China, forgot to pack his trews and then bought an emergency pair at the cost of 250 pounds to the Scottish taxpayer; the late and much-loved rugby player, Doddie Weir who, off the rugby field, was rarely photographed not in his trews; RuPaul, host of RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009-present), who wore them the day he got a star on Hollywood Boulevard; and, if yellow trews count, the British children’s cartoon character Rupert Bear.

Tup (n) – a ram. Supposedly this term is used in the north of England too, but I’ve only ever heard it used in Scotland.

Turnshie (n) – a turnip. Somewhat less common than neep, the other Scots word for turnip, turnshie has nonetheless spawned a couple of memorable compound nouns. A turnshie-gowk is another Scots word for a scarecrow, while turnshie-heid is a term of abuse meaning ‘turnip-head’, i.e., a glaikit Liz Truss-style idiot.

Unco (adv) – very. Robert Burns used this word in the following lines from his epic poem Tam O’Shanter (1791) to show the extreme happiness felt by Scotsmen whilst drinking alcohol: “While we sit bousin, at the nappy / And gettin fou and unco happy…”

Uisge beatha (n) – the Scottish Gaelic word for ‘whisky’, this has been commandeered by Scotland’s non-Gaelic speakers as an admiring term for their nation’s famous firewater. Uisge beatha is sometimes spelt in Anglicised form as usquebaugh and it gets its poetic force from the fact that it means ‘water of life’.

Vennel (n) – an alleyway or narrow lane, the word being derived from the French one ‘venelle’. Scottish terms with similar meanings include wynd and close. Probably the most famous vennel in Scotland is one simply called ‘The Vennel’, which threads upwards from the southwestern end of the Grassmarket in Edinburgh and, at its highest point, provides a good vantage point for viewing and photographing Edinburgh Castle.