This term appears twice in Dictionaries of the Scots Language. In the entry for struggle it is defined as “Jocular usage: a supper of fish and chips, as provided in a restaurant. Hence a struggle-shop, a fish-and-chip shop”.
The plant sticky willie, also known as cleavers or goosegrass, is a plant which adheres to almost anything it touches. It is defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language as “goose-grass, Galium aperine”.
Fitless, defined by Dictionaries of the Scots Language as “Unsteady on the feet, tottery, apt to stumble, either from weakness or inattention…”, basically means footless or clumsy.
The wealth of information that can be found in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language never ceases to amaze.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines Arran water as a “jocular name for whisky distilled legally or illicitly in Arran” and cites this conviviality from James Stirrat’s Poems and Songs (1843): “Spend two hours o’ social clatter, Out owre a glass o’ Arran water”.
Suffice to say that if someone calls you a tumfie, they don’t mean to flatter… Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines tumfie as, among other things, a “dull, stupid, lumpish person, a dolt …”.
Riddy appears under reid in Dictionaries of the Scots Language and is defined as having “a blushing face from embarrassment; the cause of such embarrassment”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) defines feartie as a “coward, timorous person” and notes the combined form “feardie-coward” from Watson’s Roxburghshire Wordbook (1923).
Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) gives many senses for this word, ranging from “to plunge or thrust (a thing) into a (liquid), to submerge quickly” to “set down suddenly and heavily, to plump, plank, or slap down” and “to hit with a thump, punch”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines macallum as “an ice flavoured with raspberry juice”.
