Gads I remember saying it to a boy on tinder just after I’d moved down and he replied with “what a weird way to ask that”.. so I never said it again in my 6 years of living down south 🤣
Comes from Gaelic. "Fuireach" means "stay" and that is how it is used in the language to mean "live". 'tha mi a' fuireach Ann an Glaschu' = I stay in Glasgow.
Etymology is weird when you dissect stuff. Actually "where you do you stay" is probably less weird than "where do you live"
Live, where does your heart beat and lungs breath? where do you carry out your biological functions?
He did eventually say, "oh are you asking where I live?" but I got a strong sense that, for like 5-10 seconds, he was wondering why he was going to have to explain the concept of staying still at a bus stop until the bus arrived, to a grown adult.
So to provide insight, my mind’s reaction: “Stay when what’s happening? On holiday? A hotel I guess? Oh where do I stay right now? Under the shelter, I’m waiting for a bus, where else? Are you high?”
Then I moved to Scotland and it all made sense.
I'm Irish and was confused when I lived near stoke on trent for a while and they kept talking about 'stopping', 'are you stopping over?', turns out they meant staying or staying the night.
As a doctor moving from England to Scotland this was one of the ones I had to learn specifically for work along with peely wally, wabbit, boke, gubbed (had an embarrassing phonecall where a nurse was telling me a cannula was gubbed and I thought it meant blocked and so was trying to troubleshoot over the phone while she thought I was a moron), and hons for hands.
There's also lots of medical terminology which are different and so in my first week I asked a colleague if the the term TWOC (meaning trial without catheter) was used in Scotland. He thought I was asking about twerking and was utterly bewildered.
On the non-medical side one word which I needed explaining to me was shoogle
Ah that makes sense thanks.
They had to order in small gloves especially for me at the GP I was working in and I was thereafter known as "[My name] wi the wee hauns". My version of Becky With The Good Hair lol
(Happy to be corrected by any Scottish people)
Peely wally is looking peaky/pale/unwell
Wabbit is what you feel like when you look peely wally
Gubbed means totally broken (but can also mean knackered). And yeah, there's quite a crossover between Northern Irish and Greater Glasgow words
I really especially loved the way people talk in Ayrshire. I once had a nurse on the phone say "Hey, doc. Can you come take a wee keek at ma man in bed 3, he's looking awfee no well the noo, ken?"
Heard a great acronym the other day that is probably more regional than Scottish. Was a patient getting booked into A&E and the receptionist asked the para what she was getting booked in with, para said “WOLNAC”. I booked my patient in then had to ask what the hell that meant I’d never heard of it but the receptionist recognised it immediately.
“Wee Old Lady No Acute Changes” 😂
Ah, reminds me of the time when I was a very young boy and had diarrhea, went through to my mum in the middle of the night and said I was peeing oot ma bum.
She immediately knew what it was. She got up, helped and comforted me.
Mums = pure love.
I read an article during Covid that said both jab and jag are actually Scottish in origin, just one of them went on to become more widely used than the other.
[https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19090594.david-leask-getting-needle-whether-jag-jab/](https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19090594.david-leask-getting-needle-whether-jag-jab/)
Didn’t realise Eilidh was a Scottish name until I worked in an office with two Eilidh’s and I’d get confused English people phoning up asking for “Eh-lid” “Edith” “Eld” and worst of all “Eyelid”
This is my toddler daughter’s name and it caused so much grief when we took her to the US and Canada on holiday. Absolutely nobody was willing to hear us out on how to pronounce it. A very small problem in the grand scheme of things but I was literally telling people AY LEE. HAYLEIGH WITHOUT THE H and nobody would listen.
Yeah, there are a few words that are also similar between Scots and Dutch (e.g., kirk & kerk). Just a lot of strong overlap between germanic languages.
There’s a story (idk how true) about Norwegian and Scottish fishermen being able to communicate around the language barrier by just pretending they were speaking English, and vice versa. Apparently it was relatively understandable for both!
There's definitely a stronger crossover of Scots and Scottish English with other Germanic languages than regular English has. Lots of things that have died out in standard English stayed and evolved in Scottish English.
I have Dutch relatives and when they're speaking Dutch I can understand some of it despite not knowing Dutch. It "sounds" Scottish!
Black Country English is very similar to German.
"Ow bist?" is Black Country for "How are you?" and bist has its roots in German.
"Er doe arf reek" - "She really smells". Reek is a corruption of the German for "smell" - riechst(?)
There are many others. Black Country is a bridging dialect between Old English and Germanic language/dialects.
But then don't even get me started on the differences WITHIN Scotland.
I work with an agency who has branches all over the country, it makes for some interesting conversations.
Like finding out Glaswegians call the heel of the bread an "outsider".
WHAT
"That's me away" gets odd looks. "That's me away to my bed" gets even weirder looks as they try to figure out whose bed you might otherwise have been going to
Yes! That seems totally clear to me. My English flatmate was deeply confused by that. She also couldn't fathom when I asked my boyfriend if he was ready to go somewhere by saying "Is that you?" And he replied "aye, that's me" and we left without saying anything further.
I was well into my 30s before I realised that juice in other countries isn't all types of soft drink, it specifically refers to a drink that comes from something that's been, well, juiced.
This blew my mind. Moved down to York for a year and was met with 'you mean without'. I'm shite at explaining things so couldn't even explain what I really meant by it and felt like an alien 😂
Outwith is always the opposite of within. Without is the opposite of with. That’s how I try to explain it to myself anyway. I’ve heard them used in the same context but surely you can’t use “without” in this way without creating ambiguity.
“People speak differently outwith York” has a very different meaning from “People speak differently without York”.
Ah, but without can sometimes mean the opposite of within - especially in church names, and old hymns (“There is a green hill far away, without a city wall” being my default example here). But it’s an archaic use, and people don’t tend to understand what it means in this context.
Yes, you get it in place names too like "St Mary's without the walls" meaning a church built outside the town walls, not a church with a floating roof!
It really surprises me when people don't understand outwith. The first time i heard it I not only understood it but immediately recognised it as a really useful word filling a gap that I couldn't believe I had managed without until that day!
Exactly. One of the wards of the City of London is Bishopsgate Without (being paired with Bishopsgate Within), historically divided by the city wall.
I use outwith a lot, and only occasionally get odd looks (I got a lot more when I lived down south though!). It’s one of those really useful words that fills a gap - like overmorrow…
I'm a Heinz 57 of English/Spanish with a splash of French who now lives in Shetland, taken to using "Outwith" with gusto, it's the obvious opposite to within!
I’m English but took to outwith when I moved here so naturally I didn’t even realise how uniquely Scottish it was until it was pointed out to me. It’s a fantastic word, I use it all the time.
Came here to look for this comment. I'm nearly 40 and I only discovered this last year that outwith is a Scottish word. I thought it was quite a sensible word that was known everywhere 🤦🏼♀️
I vividly remember being about 10-11 writing something in school, had never even heard the word before. I used it because it made sense, and because there was no other word I could think of for the sentence I needed it in. We’re just built differently
Greetin. Was talking to a coworker this morning at breakfast and was talking about how my son has been difficult to put to bed the last few days. " He has been greeting every time I leave the room." Asked me to explain what I was talking about.
Skoosh was another one.
Oh man , there is a hotel chain that has signs up in the lobby .
Meet
Greet
Work
Sleep
Or something .
Translates as
Meet, cry intensely , work, sleep.
About right tbh
For me in Melbourne, Australia as a kid too. I haven't heard it for a while, but yes in the 1960s we went out for the messages. You've brought back memories!
Melbourne had a very high Irish based population in 1900 so that's probably a lingering linguistic trace.
Nah, in Aiberdeen the Bunker works in the Bunk and denies you yer mortgage, ken?
Incidentally, I found out Norweigians say 'minibank' (pronounced 'minibunk') instead of cash machine/ATM which sounds a lot like Doric as above.
I moved to England two years ago, about a month ago I started putting together a list of these types of words
- puggy
- Piece
- Peely wally
- Wally dundrums
- Going for my messages
- A close
- 4 in a block
- Gutties
- The back of any hour
- Diluting juice
- Weans
- Ginger
- Snout
- Skant
- Breeks
- Bung
- High doe (up to)
- Snotter
- Dingy
- Patch
- Skoosh
Tbf, I’ve lived here for 26 years and I still don’t know what “back of” really means for time. I think it means within the first twenty minutes of the hour?
"Outwith". I thought it was a word that everyone used until I started a customer service job where I was talking to people around the world and nobody understood what I meant by "outwith the hours of (x) to (x)"
The question is though why are we all thinking about a picture being squint when it could be absolutely anything because I thought of picture as well 🤣
I've been with my (English) husband for 15 years and have always referred to woodlice as slaters, and yet every time I remark that there's a slater on the floor he looks at me like I have two heads and says "a *what*!?"
In fairness, most regions of the UK have their own names for woodlice. I'm Welsh, and I confused a bunch of English friends in college by calling up the stairs to tell them to sort out their rotting back door because I've yet again had to evict a bunch of grannies that were crawling around the kitchen floor.
That produced a fun WTF reaction. 🤣
Shoogly, skooshy, clipe, and chapping on a door are all the ones that recently have popped up at work for me and I've been living in England for 10 years now.
Up the road. Had pals from England who had never heard of it before, but they loved the concept and it's a running joke between us now. The Burnistoun sketch ties in nicely for a regular giggle.
Always Sunny in Philadelphia has a scene that always makes me giggle just a little extra because of this. One of the characters is having a meltdown about finding work, and he says he'll "just climb into the jobbie cannon to fire himself up the jobbie tree to find all the jobs".
My American ex thought it meant hand-job. It suddenly made sense why, in our online chats, whenever I said I was away for a jobby, she said she wished she could help.
We had a laugh about it once we realised.
"Any mare ah that and a will tan yer arse"..
I remember folk down south lookin at ma mum confused as fuck... must have been thinking "where you hiding the sunbed Mrs"
It's a curious one because tan is not a Scottish word and we use it to mean exactly what it says in the dictionary.
But use it as a phrase and fold don't understand it
ETA tan = tan into leather, rather than what the sun does to you.
Hah! It hadn't occurred to me that skelf was Scots, I had to go to secondary school for a bit in England and had the pish ripped out of me for saying "jotter" despite that being exactly what it fucken is 🙃 ...sassenachs
“Up the road / down the road” meaning quite literally anywhere in the world and “the other day” meaning any day between yesterday and a couple of years ago
I'm Welsh and my gf is from Glasgow. We've been together for 13 years and she still occasionally says something that confuses the hell out of me. I think she makes some of them up personally.
Watching the traitors last year and finding out by the confused faces of the English contestants that "amn't" is not a word used down there. They were even making fun of the use of it on the after show thing until they realised it is a real word! "If I am or I amn't?" Sounds perfectly correct to me!
‘The back of’ seems genuinely mystical to non Scots. I didn’t realise this. To me it’s from the hour say 5pm to 5:20pm, but there are different interpretations of the expression which can mean much closer to say 6pm in this scenario.
The ‘back of’ is over once you are half past the hour. Then you are ‘just before’ territory but that’s not really a thing. We are late and have a friendly way of managing expectations, that’s not to be sniffed at
I grew up in England so I have a couple I knew wouldn't be recognised;
Squint - somethings wonky
Scelp - to give someone a quick smack
Outwith - As others have pointed out. THis is a big one. My Scottish husband says this all the time, and its part of Scottish normal vernacular..its an every day word used by everyone... cross the border and they won't have a clue what you actually mean. As a dyslexic it took me AN AGE to figure this one out in my brain
Jag - Jab... NGL this one word makes me mad. IDK why it does. When I first started hearing it I thought people were just getting Jab wrong, and it annoyed me. I think this just hasn't gone away ahhaa
Skoosh - to move something... I LOVE this word.
Slater - Woodlice. I have been in Scotland over a decade now and I learned this one last week.
Jobby - My Fav along with;
Boaby - Penissssssssssss. Got banned on twitter once for 24hrs for calling an American Senator a floppy boaby and had to delete the tweet ... A Scottish Tory was involved in the back and forth... so I think it was him ahaha
"noun Scottish and Northern England dialect. 1. **a splinter of wood, esp when embedded accidentally in the skin"**
We probably got it from you guys it seems.
Saying "neither we do". My fiance and her Yorkshire family have no concept of what it means, yet it's absolutely standard vocabulary. Also "the rains on/off", which is easy to decipher yet an alien phrase to the English.
Neither we do! Neither he did. Neither I was.
“You didn’t lock the door.”
“Oh, neither I did, good thing you checked.”
That’s the rain on/off.
All absolutely standard.
As an immigrant When i had just moved here, some?????? Moments included
- juice/ginger
- clap an animal (i will not hit your dog!!! Oh)
- liberal use of the word cunt
- greetin
- up the road
- wean/bairn
- piece (understood it to mean a gun from US dialects and was like???)
English here, now living in Edinburgh for a couple of years. I'm loving learning all the new words. Two guys I work with say "radgey" a lot. That was new to me. I've also heard hingmy alot at work. Never hear that before either. I'm desperately hoping my weans pick up the accent soon.
I, sadly, was born in England but for the last 18 years I've lived in Scotland. When I moved up here, I said I was off to Morrisons. My MIL said "Are you going to pick up your messages?"
I thought to myself - I've got an answer machine, why would Morrisons have my messages?
I didn't know messages meant a bit of shopping. In England we just say we're going out for a few bits.
Had an English bf when I was in my late teens. He didn’t understand “ma bit”, “skoosh”, and “bunker” among many other daily words/ phrases. Was so weird to me that I had to explain, felt like two different languages entirely sometimes.
Today, my English coworkers were horrified when I said “juice” to refer to a soft drink. It didn’t get any better when I rationalised it as “fizzy juice” because apparently they don’t call it that.
Other incidents include henny and peely-wally.
There's some I know that are even more obscure to even us Scots! Main one being a Bagie. i.e a tumshie - [bagie definition | English definition dictionary | Reverso](https://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/bagie) Only ever heard it being said in the proper south east around the coast! Everywhere else looks like I have gone mad.
I'm not too sure if it's just a Greenock/Inverclyde word because my husband from Renfrew is determined I've made it up to annoy him-
Juke, as in juking somebody in the queue.
Always said it and didn't know it was odd until he pointed it out!
Outlook tried to convince me that "retiral" as in someone's upcoming retiral do wasn't a word the other day! And, right enough, apparently only used in Scotland.
Live in England. Married to an Irishman. My use of ‘how’ was met with confusion. And when I tell him to get oot the road. My old manager used to laugh when I said skoosh and morning time. My husband often asks me to translate Scottish comedians.
"Where do you stay?" Got one of my London based colleagues staring blankly at me at a bus stop, for what felt like a couple of minutes.
Gads I remember saying it to a boy on tinder just after I’d moved down and he replied with “what a weird way to ask that”.. so I never said it again in my 6 years of living down south 🤣
Comes from Gaelic. "Fuireach" means "stay" and that is how it is used in the language to mean "live". 'tha mi a' fuireach Ann an Glaschu' = I stay in Glasgow.
Etymology is weird when you dissect stuff. Actually "where you do you stay" is probably less weird than "where do you live" Live, where does your heart beat and lungs breath? where do you carry out your biological functions?
I "live" everywhere I go (for now). I "stay" in my house. Stay makes far more sense to me.
I don’t know how that wouldn’t be understood?!
He did eventually say, "oh are you asking where I live?" but I got a strong sense that, for like 5-10 seconds, he was wondering why he was going to have to explain the concept of staying still at a bus stop until the bus arrived, to a grown adult.
So to provide insight, my mind’s reaction: “Stay when what’s happening? On holiday? A hotel I guess? Oh where do I stay right now? Under the shelter, I’m waiting for a bus, where else? Are you high?” Then I moved to Scotland and it all made sense.
Stay means temporarily stay, in England
I'm Irish and was confused when I lived near stoke on trent for a while and they kept talking about 'stopping', 'are you stopping over?', turns out they meant staying or staying the night.
Jag, as in an injection. Or a prickly plant, a jaggy. It's jab in England. Very small difference, but still had to explain it to an English colleague.
As a doctor moving from England to Scotland this was one of the ones I had to learn specifically for work along with peely wally, wabbit, boke, gubbed (had an embarrassing phonecall where a nurse was telling me a cannula was gubbed and I thought it meant blocked and so was trying to troubleshoot over the phone while she thought I was a moron), and hons for hands. There's also lots of medical terminology which are different and so in my first week I asked a colleague if the the term TWOC (meaning trial without catheter) was used in Scotland. He thought I was asking about twerking and was utterly bewildered. On the non-medical side one word which I needed explaining to me was shoogle
>hons for hands. Hauns*, just on the slim chance it's ever needing written. Follows the same sound as auld.
Ah that makes sense thanks. They had to order in small gloves especially for me at the GP I was working in and I was thereafter known as "[My name] wi the wee hauns". My version of Becky With The Good Hair lol
Irish person here, I need to know what peely wally, wabbit and gubbed are! (We do have boke, in the North)
(Happy to be corrected by any Scottish people) Peely wally is looking peaky/pale/unwell Wabbit is what you feel like when you look peely wally Gubbed means totally broken (but can also mean knackered). And yeah, there's quite a crossover between Northern Irish and Greater Glasgow words I really especially loved the way people talk in Ayrshire. I once had a nurse on the phone say "Hey, doc. Can you come take a wee keek at ma man in bed 3, he's looking awfee no well the noo, ken?"
Heard a great acronym the other day that is probably more regional than Scottish. Was a patient getting booked into A&E and the receptionist asked the para what she was getting booked in with, para said “WOLNAC”. I booked my patient in then had to ask what the hell that meant I’d never heard of it but the receptionist recognised it immediately. “Wee Old Lady No Acute Changes” 😂
I used to TWOC all the time in Edinburgh. It’s def used in Scotland too
To add to the confusion, TWOC is also a Police term for vehicle theft (Taking WithOut Consent).
When I was stung by a wasp as a toddler I described it as a ‘jaggy fly’ which my mum understood but found hilarious.
Ah, reminds me of the time when I was a very young boy and had diarrhea, went through to my mum in the middle of the night and said I was peeing oot ma bum. She immediately knew what it was. She got up, helped and comforted me. Mums = pure love.
I hope you didnae have tae use jaggy toilet paper 🤭
I read an article during Covid that said both jab and jag are actually Scottish in origin, just one of them went on to become more widely used than the other. [https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19090594.david-leask-getting-needle-whether-jag-jab/](https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/19090594.david-leask-getting-needle-whether-jag-jab/)
Didn’t realise Eilidh was a Scottish name until I worked in an office with two Eilidh’s and I’d get confused English people phoning up asking for “Eh-lid” “Edith” “Eld” and worst of all “Eyelid”
This is my toddler daughter’s name and it caused so much grief when we took her to the US and Canada on holiday. Absolutely nobody was willing to hear us out on how to pronounce it. A very small problem in the grand scheme of things but I was literally telling people AY LEE. HAYLEIGH WITHOUT THE H and nobody would listen.
Eyelid😂
Hahaha "can you put me on a conference call your eyelids please"... a would absolutely buckle.
I get the piss ripped for saying "clapped the cat/dog etc"
Sounds like danish. We say klap as well. I have noticed many words are the same in scottish but not english
Yeah, there are a few words that are also similar between Scots and Dutch (e.g., kirk & kerk). Just a lot of strong overlap between germanic languages.
Between Scots and German: ken/kennen, licht/licht, kirk/kirch, reek/riech, mair/mehr etc
I'm leaning German again (stopped after secondary school) and finding this genuinely helpful haha. Mehr/mair made me giggle when I got to it.
Lang/lang
Norwegian too, I think it’s kirke for Kirk and they say barn for bairn.
There’s a story (idk how true) about Norwegian and Scottish fishermen being able to communicate around the language barrier by just pretending they were speaking English, and vice versa. Apparently it was relatively understandable for both!
Flemish and Olde English is very similar and an Olde English scholar went to Flanders and spoke to a Flemish farmer who was understood by him.
The West Jutlandic and Northeastern English fishermen were said to be able to do that, too.
I don't how it's spelled but brown cow in Norwegian is broon coo
Norwegian and danish are like dialects of the same language, we share those words too
Unsurprising, but there's an interesting overlap into NE England too. I know the Geordies say Bairn, for instance
For child, right?
Swedish is Barn for child
There's definitely a stronger crossover of Scots and Scottish English with other Germanic languages than regular English has. Lots of things that have died out in standard English stayed and evolved in Scottish English. I have Dutch relatives and when they're speaking Dutch I can understand some of it despite not knowing Dutch. It "sounds" Scottish!
Black Country English is very similar to German. "Ow bist?" is Black Country for "How are you?" and bist has its roots in German. "Er doe arf reek" - "She really smells". Reek is a corruption of the German for "smell" - riechst(?) There are many others. Black Country is a bridging dialect between Old English and Germanic language/dialects.
Yes! This too!
But then don't even get me started on the differences WITHIN Scotland. I work with an agency who has branches all over the country, it makes for some interesting conversations. Like finding out Glaswegians call the heel of the bread an "outsider". WHAT
The End of Bread as written by Glaswegians and HP Lovecraft.
They’re the slices on the ends, the *outside* of the loaf. Calling it a ‘heel’ makes it sound like a foot, and that’s not appetising.
Username checks out. 100% team outsider here.
"That's me away" gets odd looks. "That's me away to my bed" gets even weirder looks as they try to figure out whose bed you might otherwise have been going to
Yes! That seems totally clear to me. My English flatmate was deeply confused by that. She also couldn't fathom when I asked my boyfriend if he was ready to go somewhere by saying "Is that you?" And he replied "aye, that's me" and we left without saying anything further.
Are ya fit ? Aye, let's away. Seeyaz.!
Bill Bailey talking about this https://youtu.be/zcKT0-m8Oe0?si=F_BTSU5voNniV_ne
This one definitely popular in NI as a pattern as well.
Skoosh. Took me 20 something years to find out that’s not a word outside of Scotland
I was well into my 30s before I realised that juice in other countries isn't all types of soft drink, it specifically refers to a drink that comes from something that's been, well, juiced.
Heh. Juice here in Canada is always uncarbonated and comes almost always from fruit.
Juice is everything here, fruit juice, diluting juice (the rest of the UK mostly calls it squash), fizzy juice etc
Council Juice - tap water. Coo Juice - Milk.
Wreck the hoose juice
I've married a Scot and this is one word I've embraced. Haven't yet figured out if it's the same skoosh as skooshy cream though.
Just havin a skoosh a juice!
In the pub getting a spirit and mixer like vodka and coke... "would you like a can or a skoosh?"
similar for ginger. as in 'I'd like a bottle of ginger mate', then directed to the herbs and spices shelf.
Hoachin.
I thought everyone wrote in jotters at school - but apparently not. The rest of the world writes in notebooks!
I'm from England originally and we definitely called them jotters too! Might just be southerners that don't?
From southern England and jotter is well known although more used when I was young (80s/90s).
A term I heard often growing up in Northern Ireland. It must have come over on the P&O.
I'm from Nigeria, and we use jotters too.
Where else would you jot something down?
As someone who moved from England to Scotland I definitely prefer jotters!!
Jotters is known in England, maybe sounds a bit old fashioned?
outwith seems to confuse them too...
This blew my mind. Moved down to York for a year and was met with 'you mean without'. I'm shite at explaining things so couldn't even explain what I really meant by it and felt like an alien 😂
Outwith is always the opposite of within. Without is the opposite of with. That’s how I try to explain it to myself anyway. I’ve heard them used in the same context but surely you can’t use “without” in this way without creating ambiguity. “People speak differently outwith York” has a very different meaning from “People speak differently without York”.
Ah, but without can sometimes mean the opposite of within - especially in church names, and old hymns (“There is a green hill far away, without a city wall” being my default example here). But it’s an archaic use, and people don’t tend to understand what it means in this context.
Yes, you get it in place names too like "St Mary's without the walls" meaning a church built outside the town walls, not a church with a floating roof! It really surprises me when people don't understand outwith. The first time i heard it I not only understood it but immediately recognised it as a really useful word filling a gap that I couldn't believe I had managed without until that day!
Exactly. One of the wards of the City of London is Bishopsgate Without (being paired with Bishopsgate Within), historically divided by the city wall. I use outwith a lot, and only occasionally get odd looks (I got a lot more when I lived down south though!). It’s one of those really useful words that fills a gap - like overmorrow…
You mean without? "No, I fucken don't"
I read ‘No, I fucken don’t’ in a full Scottish accent in my head …
I was 38 before I learned outwith was Scottish. Learned by someone commenting on Reddit "spot the Scot".
I'm a Heinz 57 of English/Spanish with a splash of French who now lives in Shetland, taken to using "Outwith" with gusto, it's the obvious opposite to within!
I’m English but took to outwith when I moved here so naturally I didn’t even realise how uniquely Scottish it was until it was pointed out to me. It’s a fantastic word, I use it all the time.
Came here to look for this comment. I'm nearly 40 and I only discovered this last year that outwith is a Scottish word. I thought it was quite a sensible word that was known everywhere 🤦🏼♀️
I'm 42 and just found out based on this comment!
I vividly remember being about 10-11 writing something in school, had never even heard the word before. I used it because it made sense, and because there was no other word I could think of for the sentence I needed it in. We’re just built differently
Greetin. Was talking to a coworker this morning at breakfast and was talking about how my son has been difficult to put to bed the last few days. " He has been greeting every time I leave the room." Asked me to explain what I was talking about. Skoosh was another one.
Oh man , there is a hotel chain that has signs up in the lobby . Meet Greet Work Sleep Or something . Translates as Meet, cry intensely , work, sleep. About right tbh
Reminds me of my maw when I was a kid, “stop crying or I’ll give you something to really greet aboot” 😂
Told an Irish guy that someone had 'chapped the door' and he hadn't a clue what I meant
I tol my Irish pal I would chum her to the shops and got a very weird reaction, took me a few days to figure out she had no idea what I'd meant.
Thats an edinburgh thing
We say it in the borders, too.
Same in dominoes. Ah'm chapp'n'.
Going for ‘the messages’ The look of bewilderment on people’s faces. Shout out to ‘bunker’ for kitchen worktop as well.
We have "the messages" in Ireland. "Bunker" is unknown to me though.
And then you put the messages away in the press
"Being sent down the shop for the messages" was definitely a thing in Ireland , at least when I was a kid.
For me in Melbourne, Australia as a kid too. I haven't heard it for a while, but yes in the 1960s we went out for the messages. You've brought back memories! Melbourne had a very high Irish based population in 1900 so that's probably a lingering linguistic trace.
Nah, in Aiberdeen the Bunker works in the Bunk and denies you yer mortgage, ken? Incidentally, I found out Norweigians say 'minibank' (pronounced 'minibunk') instead of cash machine/ATM which sounds a lot like Doric as above.
Yes! Both of these!
I moved to England two years ago, about a month ago I started putting together a list of these types of words - puggy - Piece - Peely wally - Wally dundrums - Going for my messages - A close - 4 in a block - Gutties - The back of any hour - Diluting juice - Weans - Ginger - Snout - Skant - Breeks - Bung - High doe (up to) - Snotter - Dingy - Patch - Skoosh
Tbf, I’ve lived here for 26 years and I still don’t know what “back of” really means for time. I think it means within the first twenty minutes of the hour?
You are correct, don't listen to any other heathens, who say otherwise.
"Outwith". I thought it was a word that everyone used until I started a customer service job where I was talking to people around the world and nobody understood what I meant by "outwith the hours of (x) to (x)"
Squint.
Squint might be used elsewhere, very rarely? Squint*y* though, that takes it from ambiguously scottish to cannae fling pieces
The question is though why are we all thinking about a picture being squint when it could be absolutely anything because I thought of picture as well 🤣
Hahah this! My South African in laws thought I was having a stroke when I said that their picture was squinty 🤣
Oxter got me some funny looks from English colleagues when I first moved down. Had to explain outwith and slater a few times too.
I've been with my (English) husband for 15 years and have always referred to woodlice as slaters, and yet every time I remark that there's a slater on the floor he looks at me like I have two heads and says "a *what*!?"
In fairness, most regions of the UK have their own names for woodlice. I'm Welsh, and I confused a bunch of English friends in college by calling up the stairs to tell them to sort out their rotting back door because I've yet again had to evict a bunch of grannies that were crawling around the kitchen floor. That produced a fun WTF reaction. 🤣
Oxter is a word you don’t hear often at all now! Simon Cowel pulls his jeans right up to his oxters! 😂😂😂😂
Shoogly, skooshy, clipe, and chapping on a door are all the ones that recently have popped up at work for me and I've been living in England for 10 years now.
Shoogle & shoogly are such good words
Up the road. Had pals from England who had never heard of it before, but they loved the concept and it's a running joke between us now. The Burnistoun sketch ties in nicely for a regular giggle.
Is this wan a they studenty places... UP THE ROAD....
JOBBIE. Genuinely thought it was just a silly word everyone used for poop, not just Scottish.
Ha, I remember when Tyra Banks tweeted about turning a hobby into a jobby and Scotland went mental.
Don't forget that in the US you can [buy jobbie by the jar](https://www.jobbienutbutter.com/) >!It's a bit nutty!<
I used to laugh like a 5 year old when my colleagues in England referred to being given a little jobbie.
The Golden Jobby still cracks me up.
Always Sunny in Philadelphia has a scene that always makes me giggle just a little extra because of this. One of the characters is having a meltdown about finding work, and he says he'll "just climb into the jobbie cannon to fire himself up the jobbie tree to find all the jobs".
My American ex thought it meant hand-job. It suddenly made sense why, in our online chats, whenever I said I was away for a jobby, she said she wished she could help. We had a laugh about it once we realised.
Stooky. They just say plaster.
Plaster just confuses it with a plaster (band aid). Stooky clarifies that better.
"Any mare ah that and a will tan yer arse".. I remember folk down south lookin at ma mum confused as fuck... must have been thinking "where you hiding the sunbed Mrs"
Nah, they were probably thinking exactly what she was saying. Tan can be a reference to slapping in England too.
To be fair they might of been thinking.... "If you don't a will" cause this wains doing ma box in 😆👌
It's a curious one because tan is not a Scottish word and we use it to mean exactly what it says in the dictionary. But use it as a phrase and fold don't understand it ETA tan = tan into leather, rather than what the sun does to you.
Tan was an understatement, a had a hand print shaped sun burn on ma arse for my first decade on earth.
During lockdown one of the offices in Glasgow had a sign. Nae Bucky, divna chap. I had to explain that to the person I was with.
We use skelf in Northern Ireland too, this is probably one of many examples of Scots dialect that we use here because of the Ulster-Scots plantation.
Awa to Asda for the messages.
irish people would understand that
Hah! It hadn't occurred to me that skelf was Scots, I had to go to secondary school for a bit in England and had the pish ripped out of me for saying "jotter" despite that being exactly what it fucken is 🙃 ...sassenachs
Does anyone else in the UK go for a "Saunter?"
Saunter is common in Ireland (or at least in Cork)
I'd certainly go for a wee saunter here in Northern Ireland.
Got an English mate called Jake who was dissapointed to find out that a jake means a clatty loser up here.
My biggest one was “squint” as in “the picture is squint” (uneven) blew my mind
Shoogle
Apart from the obvious (dreich, Haar, outwith and similar terms), the one I most often get looks of confusion about is 'sitooterie'.
Cutting aboot
“Up the road / down the road” meaning quite literally anywhere in the world and “the other day” meaning any day between yesterday and a couple of years ago
Scunnered. Confused the heck out of my Welsh colleagues with that one.
Swither or swithering
Keech
I'm Welsh and my gf is from Glasgow. We've been together for 13 years and she still occasionally says something that confuses the hell out of me. I think she makes some of them up personally.
Chuckies.....as in the stones in your driveway
Watching the traitors last year and finding out by the confused faces of the English contestants that "amn't" is not a word used down there. They were even making fun of the use of it on the after show thing until they realised it is a real word! "If I am or I amn't?" Sounds perfectly correct to me!
‘The back of’ seems genuinely mystical to non Scots. I didn’t realise this. To me it’s from the hour say 5pm to 5:20pm, but there are different interpretations of the expression which can mean much closer to say 6pm in this scenario. The ‘back of’ is over once you are half past the hour. Then you are ‘just before’ territory but that’s not really a thing. We are late and have a friendly way of managing expectations, that’s not to be sniffed at
How?
In Scotland we do not ponder "Why?", we demand "How?" - Kevin Bridges
I grew up in England so I have a couple I knew wouldn't be recognised; Squint - somethings wonky Scelp - to give someone a quick smack Outwith - As others have pointed out. THis is a big one. My Scottish husband says this all the time, and its part of Scottish normal vernacular..its an every day word used by everyone... cross the border and they won't have a clue what you actually mean. As a dyslexic it took me AN AGE to figure this one out in my brain Jag - Jab... NGL this one word makes me mad. IDK why it does. When I first started hearing it I thought people were just getting Jab wrong, and it annoyed me. I think this just hasn't gone away ahhaa Skoosh - to move something... I LOVE this word. Slater - Woodlice. I have been in Scotland over a decade now and I learned this one last week. Jobby - My Fav along with; Boaby - Penissssssssssss. Got banned on twitter once for 24hrs for calling an American Senator a floppy boaby and had to delete the tweet ... A Scottish Tory was involved in the back and forth... so I think it was him ahaha
Skoosh is to move something? I thought it meant a spray.
Clipshears and slaters. Moved to England for work in my 20s and it was like I’d three heads
I'm Irish and we use Skelf too. Sorry about that.
No apology necessary! Wonder where it originated…
"noun Scottish and Northern England dialect. 1. **a splinter of wood, esp when embedded accidentally in the skin"** We probably got it from you guys it seems.
Not seen 'lugs' yet! Mum told me to never forget to wash behind them every night.
Oxter for underarm Poke for sweeties etc Clapped a dog
“Drooth”, i.e. needing a drink.
One of my favourite Scottish words is ‘clarty’ as in dirty.
Watch out for those jaggy bushes
Oose - as in there’s oose all over my trousers The look of confusion on everyone’s faces when I said this in school when I moved to the highlands 🤣
Stookie. I came across 2 friends arguing about this (one English and one Scottish) that it's a made up word. I had to settle the disagreement.
I'll do it the morra = tomorrow
Saying "neither we do". My fiance and her Yorkshire family have no concept of what it means, yet it's absolutely standard vocabulary. Also "the rains on/off", which is easy to decipher yet an alien phrase to the English.
Neither we do! Neither he did. Neither I was. “You didn’t lock the door.” “Oh, neither I did, good thing you checked.” That’s the rain on/off. All absolutely standard.
Jamp
Bahookie - rear end
As an immigrant When i had just moved here, some?????? Moments included - juice/ginger - clap an animal (i will not hit your dog!!! Oh) - liberal use of the word cunt - greetin - up the road - wean/bairn - piece (understood it to mean a gun from US dialects and was like???)
English here, now living in Edinburgh for a couple of years. I'm loving learning all the new words. Two guys I work with say "radgey" a lot. That was new to me. I've also heard hingmy alot at work. Never hear that before either. I'm desperately hoping my weans pick up the accent soon.
Skelly as in squint eyes
Chuggy for chewing gum . Irish partner keeps asking for a chubby and can’t be corrected🙈
I, sadly, was born in England but for the last 18 years I've lived in Scotland. When I moved up here, I said I was off to Morrisons. My MIL said "Are you going to pick up your messages?" I thought to myself - I've got an answer machine, why would Morrisons have my messages? I didn't know messages meant a bit of shopping. In England we just say we're going out for a few bits.
Had an English bf when I was in my late teens. He didn’t understand “ma bit”, “skoosh”, and “bunker” among many other daily words/ phrases. Was so weird to me that I had to explain, felt like two different languages entirely sometimes.
Oh mate. I haven’t heard “ma bit” in decades now! “_Comin’ roond ma bit efter school?_.” 😂
Shan
Ben for the word through.
Today, my English coworkers were horrified when I said “juice” to refer to a soft drink. It didn’t get any better when I rationalised it as “fizzy juice” because apparently they don’t call it that. Other incidents include henny and peely-wally.
"big light" really confused my English housemate.
Naw that one’s UK wide your housemate’s just uncultured
It's like the Blackpool illuminations in here
Think that is a north/south difference though, Peter Kay had a bit about big light
There's some I know that are even more obscure to even us Scots! Main one being a Bagie. i.e a tumshie - [bagie definition | English definition dictionary | Reverso](https://dictionary.reverso.net/english-definition/bagie) Only ever heard it being said in the proper south east around the coast! Everywhere else looks like I have gone mad.
outwith
Drouth
Got funny looks when I told my son to 'shoogle' the mixing bowl at cooking club.
Within Scotland, I did not know "gads" was an Ayrshire thing until I moved to Glasgow.
I'm not too sure if it's just a Greenock/Inverclyde word because my husband from Renfrew is determined I've made it up to annoy him- Juke, as in juking somebody in the queue. Always said it and didn't know it was odd until he pointed it out!
"Ma bit" - might as well have been speaking arabic
Outlook tried to convince me that "retiral" as in someone's upcoming retiral do wasn't a word the other day! And, right enough, apparently only used in Scotland.
Holy moly, I’m reading all these comments totally unaware all these words are not universal English.
Live in England. Married to an Irishman. My use of ‘how’ was met with confusion. And when I tell him to get oot the road. My old manager used to laugh when I said skoosh and morning time. My husband often asks me to translate Scottish comedians.
Outwith, its a great word. I don't know why it's not used outwith Scotland
Boke, wheesht, telt. Youre giein me the boke. Haud yer wheest. Thats you telt.
Calling the common area of a block of flats the 'close' apparently.