Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAlister
Word of the Day: tartle
“Tartle” refers to the momentary hesitation in recognizing a person, place or thing. It’s that awkward instant when you temporarily forget someone’s name as you are being introduced or the name of a place you know well but can’t recall. The word is said to be unique to the Scottish dialect, although the phenomenon is probably global. What makes it particularly unique is that it doesn’t mean a total memory lapse, just the slight hesitation before a well-known name can be recalled.
Because there has never historically been a single language spoken by all Scots, there remain enough left-over idiosyncratic regional words and oddities that even English speakers require translation. Southern areas traditionally spoke Lowland Scots, central and northern areas spoke Gaelic and the in far north Orkney Isles and Shetland Isles, they spoke a form of Old Norse.
While a number of Scottish words are popularly used, like bonnie for pretty, aye for yes and wee for little, some are less popular but may be guessed from context ,like tatties for potatoes or ken for know. Others require translation, like bampot, numpty and galoot which all mean idiot, or boggin, manky and clorty, meaning filthy. Other uniquely Scottish words include crabit (grumpy), gubbed (beaten badly), haver (babble), peely-wally (pale), fankle (tangle), couthy (warm, cozy) and kenspeckle (conspicuous).
Popular convention may hold that “purple” has no rhyme, but trust the Scots to have two: curple, the rump of a horse, and hirple, to walk with a limp. Hirple is in the Scrabble dictionary, although tartle and curple are not. A wee fact you might ken if you were Scottish.
