First in a series
mauchit
(maw·kit) Dialect, chiefly Scot -adj. dirty, filthy, sticky, muddy.
Cf. Mauchy, Mochy, Maukie, Mawkit. (see also Manky, Clarty)
(often used in ‘Lookit the colour o’ ye, ya mauchit wee to’rag’).
Your Scottish Slang Scots Word O’ The Day: Mauchit
Derived from Mawk–a maggot. If something is “mawkit” it is (literally) crawling with “mawks” or maggots.
Hello. Recently read a book “A Small Death in the Great Glen” by A. D. Scott, which was full of Scottish words — of which I made a list. Grew up in Scotland, though lived in Australia for the last 50 odd years. Surprised at how many of these words were charmingly familiar. Here’s the list, minus the eleven that already appear in your list of 28. Yours Aye. Donald.
Dwam, Coorie,Peching, Peched, Bourach, Dreich, Birl, Haar, Peely-Wally, Girning, Haud on, Brae, Feart, Clootie, Blethering, Awfy, Tarn, Clachans, Gaeltacht, Sleikit, Cobals, Havers, Panjandrum, Wally Dugs, Neb, Plook, Guising, Gabbing, Keeker, Dooking, Slainte Mhath, Corbies, Jammies, Numpty, Breeks, Skirl, Nyaffs, Clype, Flit
Hah, I very recently read the same book and did the same thing you did, although I think you may have caught more than me. A lot of them were easy to figure out because of context.
Scots is NOT slang.
http://www.scotslanguage.com/ or http://www.dsl.ac.uk/
This is about much, much more than a proposition that we lighten up – we get this nonsense endlessly as part of the Scottish cultural cringe. The slang description has been and is used to diminish our proud and ancient linguistic heritage to be considered little more than a dialect of English, spoken only by uneducated peasants. There is a reason for this – Americans might think of the native American analogy – once considered uncivilised barbarians by the colonialists. You may also wish to consider the past English perception of Irishness and of their culture and language. It keeps us in our place, our own people unaware of its history, beauty and meaning. So unfortunately, describing our language as slang is hugely insulting as well as being ignorant (uneducated in fact – oh the irony). No offence intended, and I do know your uninformed description wasn’t meant to be offensive to over a million Scots speakers.
So glad you said this! I was brought up using these words ( I’m sixty and had older parents which may be why I know them ALL so well.) but at school we were discouraged from using much of our language- the message being that we were speaking lazily or commonly. I LOVE these words – they describe many elements of Scotland that “English” cannot- for example Dreich- describes a particular type of rain and has far more colour and detail than Drizzle- Thankyou for your points.
As with many words here labelled slang[which they are not, just Scots dialect] ‘mauchit’ or more correctly ‘mawkit’ may well be used nowadays to mean filthy, whereas its true meaning is infected with mawks (maggots) which attack sheep at their back end, countered by docking their tails while still tiny lambs, and making them go through regular dipping by complete immersion.
Maw to Glaswegians means mum.