HOAST
THIS venerable old word for a cough has Scandinavian and Germanic roots. There are examples in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) dating back to the 14th century.
The DSL also notes that a hoast can be used to attract attention, “a hem, a cough made to attract attention or to stop someone”. This is exemplified by Galt’s Annals of the Parish (1821): “But I gave them a sign by a loud host.”
David Toulmin uses it in his Collected Short Stories (1992) to describe some poor soul who is “wracked with a hach and a hoast that put him off his work with pneumonia”. In Bonsai Grower (1998) Sheena Blackhall vividly describes the scene of many folk afflicted with a cold: “Aa roon her, fowk snochered and pyochered an hoastit into their snifter-dichters.”
Our research has shown that the fowk are indeed still hoastin – hopefully still into their hankies. The Forres Gazette of April 2020 records, at the start of the pandemic, the following advice: “If ye feel bilin’ het, or hae a dry kinkin’ hoast, dinna ging te yer GP or hospital”.
If you have a kink-hoast you have whooping cough, against which Scotland’s patron saint, Andrew, can protect you - as referenced in the National of January 2019: “Is it no a grand thing that Scotland’s national day is a celebration o a artist [Robert Burns]? Nae offence tae ye, St Andrae, but seein as hoo yer the patron saint o Barbados, Russia an protection agin the kink-hoast, ye’ve plenty tae be gettin oan wi.”
Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel, Dictionaries of the Scots Language https://dsl.ac.uk.
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