DAFTIE
THE earliest record of the word “daftie” (with the meaning of foolish or unsound mind) in Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) is from 1870 in Charles Gibbon’s For the King: “The Daftie still maintained his position”.
However, in the course of further research, we found an earlier example, from the Stonehaven Journal of May 1867: “Two notorious pickpockets David Sutherland … and William Strachan or McDonald, alias ‘Daftie’, are in custody here. Why William had the alias of daftie is not recorded – perhaps because he got caught.
The original meaning of daftie was offensive and it is still used as a term of mockery or belittlement. An example of this comes from the Aberdeen Evening Express of November 2021 on the workings of Aberdeen City Council: “I never thought I would say this, but I agree with Aberdeen city councillor Marie Boulton. Last week she resigned as ‘masterplan lead’ – a hoot of a daftie title that hopefully will be permanently dumped – when she didn’t get anyone to support her bid to allow public transport on the mid-section of Union Street now earmarked for pedestrianisation.”
In a similar vein, in the letters page of the Daily Record of January 2022, one correspondent wrote: “What a daftie reader John Smith from Falkirk is.”
In more recent times, daftie is also used almost as a term of endearment: “Aldo scowls at ma reaction ‘Listen, ya dafties. That bunch ae Stephen Hawkins born without the brains are like family tae me’” (Colin Burnett’s Working Class State of Mind, 2021).
Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here