Droukit adjective drenched, soaked
‘“It was better to be outside than in. And yet, by the evening, we would be so droukit wi’ fatigue that we could barely set one foot before the other. It was like walking in a dream.”’ (The Fiery Cross)
The verb drouk, or drook, means to soak, but droukit carries more than just the sense of being wet through. There is often an associated inner misery. You can’t help feeling sympathy for ‘The jaded coal horses, scranky an’ lean ... a’ droukit through wi’ the cauld raw sleet’ described by James Ballantine in The Miller of Deanhaugh (1844).
‘As weet as a droukit rat’ is a well-known simile for bedraggled sogginess, and so it is a little surprising to encounter another beastie used similarly by John Gibson Lockhart in Reginald Dalton (1823): ‘Ellen, when she came ashore, was as druckit as a water-wagtail’. If she had been compared to any other non-water-dwelling wagtail - such as the nanny washtail (also known as a kirk sparrows or sittie fitties), she would have been fine as they never appear anything less than immaculate.
Drookit proves a useful word in a definition of glaur (soft, sticky mud) given by Ranald MacRailt in Hoolachan (1923): ‘Weel, just to mak’ it plainer to your understanding, glaur, whilk is identical wi’ glaupit clart [muddy dirt], is just, as ony bairn wad ken, drookit stour [dust]’.
Having got fair droukit in a thunner plump, onding, blatter, skite or smirr (Scots is particularly rich in words for rain) there is nothing better than to be back indoors. The resultant bonhomie is captured in a quotation from the Herald (1992): ‘We ate this wondrous repast this evening after a drookety day out skip-raiding and it was a deeply bonding experience’.
Returning home after a long shift underground in the wet, ‘Drookit miners at lowsin [at liberty], whan hame fae the mine, Suin stripp't aff thir pee-wee's [miners’ singlets] ti a scrub in the bine [tub]’, as Davie Kerr recalls in A Puckle Poems (2000).
Walter Scott described this peril of a droukin in The Antiquary (1816): ‘Marching in terribly drouket, an mony a sair hoast [bad cough] was amang them’. So take care and stay dry.