These days we wouldn’t like to be described as sleekit given that the Dictionaries of the Scots Language definition “of persons or their words or actions: smooth in manner, plausible, ingratiating, unctuous; insinuating, sly, cunning, specious, not altogether to be trusted” is the most common usage. But sleekit also means “smooth, having an even surface or glossy skin”.
It’s hard to know, in To a Mouse (1785), if by “Wee, sleeket, cowrin, tim’rous beastie” Burns meant the mouse was sleek and glossy or just a cunning wee rascal and a bit of a feardie.
It’s clear that Scott means wheedling by it in Redgauntlet (1824) though: “The same soft, sleekit tone of voice”.
And this is clearly a depiction of a very slippery customer from the Scotsman (1956): “He’s sae sleekit your een fair skyte off him”. Later, Stanley Robertson (Traveller and author) recorded in his autobiographical Fish Hooses (1990) that: “They [his co-workers] were kind of sleekit. Whin they heard mi reading Muggie’s palm for a laugh, then they aa wanted it deen. They aa turned kind tae mi and even dame Polly changed her tune taewards mi. But I wisnae being taken in by them”.
To end with another, possibly less lovable rodent, there’s this from Keeks Mc’s Contermacious Temerity (2023): “… thay moot yer ne’er mair than / ten feet awa fae a ratton / Noo, aither thay’re pu’in ma leg / or rattons are invisible / but ony which wey, they maun be gey sleekit / kis Ah’ve ainly e’er seen wan.”
Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
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