A hundred select words in the Scots tongue from Affront to Yule defined and commented upon with examples ranging from the late fifteenth century to the early twenty-first. Most have previously appeared as a column in the Glasgow newspaper The Herald as “Scots Words of the Week” since 2005. Each is a short one page essay of about 350 words. The editor herself penned five new of these for this edition.

Here are a few examples: most English speakers would be familiar with Yule as another way of saying Christmas, but Hogmany for New Years Eve, was new for me, even though for most of my life I’ve been singing Robert Burns’s very Scots song to celebrate it. Affront as a verb is defined as to cause to feel ashamed. In her comments following the definition, contributor Chris Robinson notes, “Affront is not uncommon in English, but Scots, seemingly in habitual paroxysms of black burning shame, have a particular partiality for the past participle. During my teenage years, my mother was regularly black affrontit at the shortness of my skirts.” In the lowlands a freckle is called a ferntickle and a quarrel between neighbors is a stairheid rammy. ( )