By including a carefully chosen selection of Scots words and phrases in her Outlander novel series, Diana Gabaldon has brought Scots to the notice of more than 50 million readers worldwide.
Naturally, all of Diana’s chosen terms are recorded in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (dsl.ac.uk), the nation’s authority on the meaning and history of Scots vocabulary from the earliest beginnings to the present day. With definitions for some 80,000 terms, illustrated by some 710,000 quotations from over eight centuries of usage, our dictionaries additionally provide a unique insight into the history, culture and traditions of the Scots-speaking people.
Many Outlander fans may not appreciate that Scots is a distinct language, divergent from English since at least the fourteenth century but with whom it shares a common ancestor in Old English, or Anglo-Saxon. Thanks to this common origin, Scots and English share a large core of native vocabulary albeit with many differences in spelling and pronunciation: compare Scots hoose with English house and Scots heid (which rhymes with heed) and English head, for example. Both languages have also borrowed extensively from others throughout their histories and many of these borrowings are or have become characteristic of Scots: examples include partan ‘a crab’ from Gaelic, gowk ‘the cuckoo’ (Old Norse), dornick ‘a linen cloth’ (Dutch), dispone ‘to assign, grant’ (Latin), and tasse ‘a drinking cup’ (French). And like many languages with an extensive history, Scots is characterised by significant regional variation. The Scots you’ll hear in Glasgow, for example, is markedly different from the Scots you’ll hear in Edinburgh even though these two cities are just 70 km apart. This adds another layer of richness and diversity to the guid Scots tongue.
We have compiled this book as a handy companion to the Outlander book series, to help readers as they encounter unfamiliar Scots terms and wonder about their meanings and usages. There are several hundred such terms throughout the series (we know because we excerpted each and every one!) and we could easily fill several similar volumes. This one contains our one hundred favourites.
For each of our chosen words we introduce its main senses and provide a few entertaining quotations drawn from our extensive collection to illustrate how the word has been used by other writers of Scots over the centuries. We include quotations from the Outlander book series as well; hopefully you will recognise some of them.
On behalf of the team behind the Dictionaries of the Scots Language, we would like to thank Diana for her ready and generous support for this project and you, the reader, for your interest.
Rhona Alcorn |
CEO Dictionaries of the Scots Language SCIO |