Fyuchie or fauchie is defined in Dictionaries of the Scots Language variously as meaning “pale yellowish grey”, “pale”, “stagnant, stale”.
Examples relating to colour include the following from Swatches o Hamespun (1922): “The fyauchy grey breeks o’ Tam Toshach danced afore her een”.
And Sara Clark uses it to mean pale in Echo and Narcissus (2021): “… fauchie as bane…”. As does Thomas Clark in The Boggin Beginnin (2021): “Afore awfie lang, Mr. Poe drove his motor doon a wee vennel lined wi hooses biggit o fauchie brick…”
However, it can also mean dirty or disgusting. “Written doon this wey, it doesna seem an awfie guid sang, but comin through fauchie broon oose at aboot hauf-past eleven on a gey sunny mornin, it seemed tae Pooh tae be yin o the best sangs he had ever sung.” (The Hoose at Pooh’s Neuk, James Robertson, 2010).
Both senses are in current use. The following two examples come from the Aberdeen Evening Express, decades apart. Firstly, from March 1997: “Take that (please!) graffiti riddled monstrosity of a redundant shelter down at the beach, slap on the prom. It’s been festering away for donkeys, a fyuchie carbuncle on our shore”. And the second, from March 2023, uses it to mean colour: “This indispensable gadgie [man] maybe doesn’t fix broken hearts, but he does everything else. Having painted my garden fence a fashionable fyuchie grey, Jake set to work on reddin’ [clearing] oot my gutters. That’s when I heard him up the ladder in prolonged conversation on his mobile”.
Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
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