As my granny used to say.....

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My mother: Stone-cold-dead-in-the-market, as in "Get down here for dinner or it'll be stone-cold-dead-in-the-market!!". Also being a picky eater results in leaving a "sassy plate", which could get your hide tanned in my house....

― Laurel (Laurel), Monday, 28 November 2005 22:34 (twenty years ago)

I've just consulted with the mister and he concurs with the popular opinion (i.e. not mine) that it is indeed stonner. Though he does understand my confusion. He is also worried that I am discussing slang terms for boy things with a newspaper type on the internet.

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 28 November 2005 22:35 (twenty years ago)

I quite often say things that I think are fairly common parlance, and get odd looks off people. Does anyone outside of Inverness refer to bin men as scaffies?

I love all the Caithness/Doric ones that my mum comes out with which I have no idea how to spell. FOr example, the word for a dog is a bowf (maybe bouf, I'm not sure) but our dog Sandy was always referred to as "the bowf", "bowfy" or "Sandy-bowf". This is not weird to people in the North of Scotland, but elsewhere can cause much hilarity. My mum also has a fab word for feeling a bit weak and queasy, which is pronounced fee-oun (rhyming with noun) which I use a lot and have never heard anyone else say.

A piece of jam - a jam sandwich.

See, up here that's a piece AND jam. Unless you are Oor Wullie, in which case it's a jeely piece.

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 28 November 2005 22:50 (twenty years ago)

my grandma used to call the couch the "davenport."

― kelsey (kelstarry), Monday, 28 November 2005 22:59 (twenty years ago)

Frankly the Scots own this thread. Unless the rest of us just start making shit up.

Er, my Gran used to call teeth 'rackles'. "Rub yer rackles or the English'll get yeh", she used to say.

True story.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:03 (twenty years ago)

Fat as a butcher's dog.

― giboyeux (skowly), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:20 (twenty years ago)

Me stomach thinks me throat's ben cut.

― giboyeux (skowly), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:20 (twenty years ago)

Other ones I've never heard anyone but my mother (and, by default, me) say:

bowg = stomach (that's a Caithness one, definitely)
keeker = black eye
bauchle = a scabby old shoe (or a skanky person by extension)
away in a dwam = daydreaming (OK, I have heard that off other people, but not that many)

I can't even think of things that might be odd because I just use words I grew up listening to and it never occurred to me that they might be odd. I only found out a couple of weeks ago that scaffy wasn't in common usage down here (focus group = three blokes in the pub).

Xpost = Fit as a butcher's dog, innit?

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:22 (twenty years ago)

Wrong as two left boots.

Face as long as a wet weekend.

xp: my mom says "fat."

― giboyeux (skowly), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:23 (twenty years ago)

"A messer" - someone who's messy

"Crotchety" - someone who's angry and upset: "Don't get crotchety". I've never heard this used since, but it's pretty great!

― S- (sgh), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:31 (twenty years ago)

"Crotchety" - someone who's angry and upset: "Don't get crotchety". I've never heard this used since, but it's pretty great!

Really? I've heard this all over the States, but usually only in conjunction with phrases like "crotchety old man."

― giboyeux (skowly), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:33 (twenty years ago)

Not that my brother is a granny, but when things were great, excellent, wicked, whatever the kids say these days, he used to proclaim things as "chatty doofer". I think this was quite common in Inverness back in the day, but I have never heard it anywhere else.

Gadgie/gadgiecoff = a bloke
Burach/guddle/midden = a great big untidy mess (much like my house at the moment)

The best insult I ever heard my dad shout at the football was to any useless striker who couldn't direct a header = "he's got a head like a Tobermory Tattie". (it's a sweetie).

― ailsa (ailsa), Monday, 28 November 2005 23:36 (twenty years ago)

ailsa: i think yr etymology might yet be proved correct. either way: thank you all who responded.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 00:15 (twenty years ago)

My gran always referred to our front porch as the piazza.
My dad on weak hitting baseballers: "that guy couldn't hit an elephant in the ass with a snowshovel".
Our living room couch was a divan, never a sofa.

― jim wentworth (wench), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 03:07 (twenty years ago)

my grandma's idioms are all in yiddish. (it's funny how many of these examples are rooted in ethnicity.)

i've seen this at the bookstore and one day i'm going to sit down in the starbucks and read it:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0312307411.01._BO2,204,203,200_PIlitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,32,-59_AA240_SH20_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

― surf punks from arizona (Jody Beth Rosen), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 03:29 (twenty years ago)

bunk or bunkum

― Kim (Kim), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 03:56 (twenty years ago)

I have that book ordered on Interlibrary Loan.

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:04 (twenty years ago)

If you like something, you are partial to it, i.e. "He's partial to chocolate gravy on biscuits."

― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:04 (twenty years ago)

My grandmother always said, "Be oblong and have your knees removed."

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:09 (twenty years ago)

My Nan used to make the best pies in the world.

― The Jargon King (noodle vague), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:10 (twenty years ago)

Huh. Here I always thought "partial to" was a particularly Kentucky turn of phrase w/r/t liking something, but there it is spelled out in the dictionary.

― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:19 (twenty years ago)

I thought "partial to" was universal.

― I do feel guilty for getting any perverse amusement out of it (Rock Hardy), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:30 (twenty years ago)

It must be. I'm blaming my mother, who had issues with her mother-in-law and who undoubtedly taught me "partial to" was odd in a not terribly charming way.

― Jaq (Jaq), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:37 (twenty years ago)

Ailsa, my Irish grandmother used to call mess 'guddle'. It's a lovely word. She wasn't very tidy so she'd say things like, 'What's all this guddle?' or, 'Look at all that guddle' rather than, 'Let's clean up this guddle'. The word has a kindly hapless aspect to it, for me.

― estela (estela), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 04:48 (twenty years ago)

Estels, that's an awesome word.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 05:15 (twenty years ago)

:) my grandmother was very cute.

― estela (estela), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 05:54 (twenty years ago)

Once, when my brother forgot his Maths book, the Christian Brother who taught him said "oh, it's at home is it? You might as well put it in a glass case and throw sugar at it".

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 08:16 (twenty years ago)

My dad always says "how yer belly where the pig bit ya?"

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 09:04 (twenty years ago)

how=how's, gah typo.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 09:13 (twenty years ago)

guddle - I think this is also a Cumbrian (?) word for tickling, as in the method of catching a trout.

― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 09:20 (twenty years ago)

Mr calls wasps "Bakies" - have never heard this used outside his family.

Gutties - trainers

"I've got a mouth shaped for ______________" used by my gran - ie: "I had a mouth shaped for a mutton pie and they had none left."

Or "I took a notion for a mutton pie"

― Rumpie (lil drummer girl parumpumpumpu), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 09:52 (twenty years ago)

I always liked the phrase 'doing a line' for going out with someone. Unfortunately it is one of those phrases that means something totally different nowadays. If you had been together for ages you were doing a big line, or doing a strong line with someone.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 10:15 (twenty years ago)

"Are you courting?" = question of HORROR. My grandad asked this of my sister and me every Christmas from about 1990 onwards. In 1999 I was finally able to give an affirmative response (and have done ever since) so the pressure transferred to my sister who still has to give a grumpy "no", poor luv.

― Mädchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 10:26 (twenty years ago)

I also love the phrase 'rig out', to describe a full outfit, including shoes and preferably a hat, which one might wear to an event such as a wedding.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 10:53 (twenty years ago)

scots, particularly those from the renfrewshire area: anybody ever heard "stoner" (pronounced "stonner") used to mean a hard-on?

Classic insult in the teenage race to lose one's virginity: "You still think a stonner's for pishing over high walls!"
The worst thing imaginable at school was to be the boy who "got a stonner in the showers"

Another horrible word for "courting" here in the west of Scotland is "winching". I've actually heard someone say "Not in the face, I'm winching" before a street fight.

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:03 (twenty years ago)

Winching! Fabulous. My great auntie used to make me squirm with embarrasment by asking me this. "Ur ye winchin' yet hen?"

― Rumpie (lil drummer girl parumpumpumpu), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:07 (twenty years ago)

My grandfather used to call us 'little bosthoons' when we misbehaved.

― estela (estela), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:17 (twenty years ago)

When he was pleased he would say, 'how are you, my little flower of the pine?'

― estela (estela), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:18 (twenty years ago)

i always thought winching meant "snogging". ah well. it's tough being an englishman in the central belt.

little bosthoons! my mum used to call people "bastidges and iceholes", but i've no idea where she got that from.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:19 (twenty years ago)

In Dublin, many insults are prefixed with "dirty-lookin"

Dirty-lookin' eejit
Dirty-lookin' up all night (note that this in no way implies that you have been up all night. It is not the same as being a dirty stop-out)

Grimly, I've an idea your mam got that from a Mel Brooks film, or something similar.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:32 (twenty years ago)

Winching *is* snogging, but it also means that you're involved in a snogging relationship with someone iykwim. I think winching as snogging has been replaced by the awful "pulling".

My mate's granny always called him a "big algae" - I think it started as a reference him growing too quickly but ended up as a general insult.

My Nan used to refer to amusing people as "a card" or "a star turn".

I always thought "cloot" was a word for "coat" ("ne'er cast a cloot 'til May's oot").

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:47 (twenty years ago)

knock - clock

... this one used to really confuse me. "Knock" pronounced to rhyme with "cloak" of course.

― Oh No, It's Dadaismus (and His Endless Stupid Jokes) (Dada), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:48 (twenty years ago)

My gran used to always say the 'dish cloot'.

― Rumpie (lil drummer girl parumpumpumpu), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:50 (twenty years ago)

I thought a clout was a vest. May does not refer to the month, but to the flower of the hawthorn, so don't take your vest off until the hedges are white with blossom, OK?

― Mädchen (Madchen), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:50 (twenty years ago)

These are both from my dad rather then my granny:

puddock - a toad
speug - a sparrow

― Oh No, It's Dadaismus (and His Endless Stupid Jokes) (Dada), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:51 (twenty years ago)

vest = simmit

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:55 (twenty years ago)

a cloot is a cloth, and by extension a vest. a clootie dumpling, however, should not be cooked in a vest. although, hmm, interesting flavour ...

x-post: god, yes, i've not heard that in years.

i should have a much better collection of this stuff because my dad's from the frozen north-east of scotland, and my mum's from the frozen north-east of scotland BY WAY OF BRADFORD. which is kinda fucked-up in terms of accent/dialect/regional lexicon.

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:58 (twenty years ago)

My other granny used to say "away and puckle yer wuckle". I've no idea what it meant but I think it might be a bit rude.

clipe: tell-tale, school supergrass type

― Onimo (GerryNemo), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:59 (twenty years ago)

i've just remembered my dad using stroopie as a synonym for a small and flaccid cock.

(we've had some fascinating discussions over the years, me and my dad.)

― grimly fiendish (grimlord), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 12:06 (twenty years ago)

Clipe's a good one.

stank - a drain or drain cover

― Oh No, It's Dadaismus (and His Endless Stupid Jokes) (Dada), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 12:06 (twenty years ago)

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