Hi All 👋 and welcome to December’s project: Things in Scots. This month I am collaborating with my wife, Susan (? follow this link to see and hear her post), and we’ll be posting mostly daily — Things in Scots (great title eh?).

Today’s is quite an easy one; whuskie – whisky. Whisky has many different names in Scots: fuskie (north-east) bree, barley-bree, John Barleycorn, the hard (stuff), the stuffie, the craitur, the mercies, wheich, usquebae, aquavita, mountain dew; cheap, inferior whisky is referred to as speel-the-wa; cheap, strong and raw as kill-the-cairter.

A measure of whuskie is known as a dram, or a hauf; a small measure is a wee hauf (not spoken of in this hoose).

And below is a dram, hooker, cauker, roostie nail or wee goldie (glass of whisky). The very fine example within the glass this time is The Ardmore Legacy

Slainte!

All the Scots words for these posts are taken from The Concise English-Scots Dictionary, by the Scottish National Dictionary Association. The words chosen will be the generally accepted term, but as in all languages there are regional variations, as well as sub-species variations. For example, an owl is generally known as a hoolet in Scots, but an ool in Shetland & the NE. A barn owl is a white hoolet & a long eared owl, a hornnie hoolet.

As we do these posts, we’re learning as well; so we apologise in advance for any mistakes?

If any of you out there have a burning desire to know the Scots word for anything, please let us know!

Hae a guid day