- monkey. Pugs, or more commonly puggies, did not seem to inspire affection and were a byword for ugliness. So we can assume the writer of the article in the St Andrews Gazette of 25 July 1862 was not a member of the temperance movement:
I'd faur rather crack nitts [nuts] a lee-lang winter's nicht wi' a puggy, than hear intemperate an' inconsistent speeches on temperance.
Alan Ramsay speculates in verse (1722) that
‘Tis Gowd that makes some great Men witty, And puggy Lasses fair and pretty.
Another example of puggie being used pejoratively is given by James Stewart in his Sketches of Scottish Character (1857):
A skrankie [scraggy] puggie face an' scaud ee [scabby eye].
Pugginess does not necessarily preclude affection, though, as we read in Robert Louis Stevenson's Catriona (1893) of
My affection for my king, God bless the puggy face of him.
A Scots speaker from Fife (1952) colourfully explained:
A person working clumsily with a tool is like a puggy suppin pheesic [medicine] wi' an elsin [awl].
As fou as a puggie means extremely drunk.