Snell
- keen, bitter, sharp, severe. This adjective is very commonly associated with the wind, in this case with unattractive consequences: Ma neb is blae [My nose is blue]; the wund is snell (George Campbell Hay 1979 in Chapman ed. Joy Hendry 1985). It can however, be used of other cutting weather such as the Haylstanys bath scharpe and snelle described by Androw of Wyntoun in The Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland (1420). Another early example comes from Gavin Douglas’s translation of the Aeneid (1513): Chyvirrand [shivering] for cald, the sesson was so snell.