THE first definition given in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) for the word keeker is “one who watches or pries”, but many Scots will know it better in the context of a blue keeker, or black eye.

The first DSL example of this sense is from Ayrshire, in Poems by M Lochhead (1852): “We’ll gie them noo the time o’ day, In a blue keeker.” Later, the Sunday Post of August 31, 1958 recorded: “That’s a richt keeker! How did ye get that black eye?”

Fergus Lamont, the eponymous hero of Robin Jenkins’ 1979 novel, when forced to wear a kilt, exclaimed: “Onybody that laughs will get a keeker from me.” More sinisterly, a report in the Daily Record of October 18, 1997 stated that: “…the unfortunate actress who turned up at a premiere sporting a velvet eyepatch to cover the keeker given to her by her lover, was Zsa Zsa Gabor…”

In the 21st century a sporting injury is reported thus in the Herald of February 19, 2001: “Ramon Vega, still sporting a keeker from the Old Firm game, said: ‘That was a hard game to play in, very tough. Dunfermline never give up and we are lucky to be still in the cup'.”

A final example comes from the Aberdeen Press and Journal of November 10, 2018, which reported a young man who faked a mugging by getting “…my pal, Mick the Pill, to gie me a keeker to make it look mair authentic.”

Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.