Scots has quite a few words for things that are “troublesome, annoying, irksome; of a task, tricky, ticklish” or, as further defined in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language, “Fractious, peevish, fretty, especially of children; fussy, fastidious”.

This word certainly has a distinguished pedigree. An early example dates back to 1531 from Boece’s The History and Chronicles of Scotland: “It wer bot ane faschious and vane laubour”.

And later (1737) we have a somewhat sexist example from Allan Ramsay’s A Collection of Scots Proverbs: “A reeky house and a girning Wife, will make a Man a fasheous Life”.

Ringing true even today, in 1779 Dougal Graham expressed this frustration in his Collected Writings: “If it be not easier to deal wi' fools than headstrong fashous fouks”.

Equally heart-felt, in Hert’s Bluid (1995), David Purves writes: “Sum meisterie haes maerk't ye out apairt frae ither weimen, ti synd awa aw fashiousness an hael ma hattert [battered] sowl”. Who says we Scots can’t be romantic.

Later, Rab Wilson perfectly captures the anxiety of anticipation in Dancin in the Waitin Room, from Chuckies fir the Cairn (2009): “Aa oor leevin Is in waitin. In these moments We fuin oor myriad selves: Anxious, hopefou, tremmlin, Wishfou, fearfou, fashious.”

Finally, a recent example comes from Peter Reid’s Doric Column in the Press & Journal from March 2024, recalling the town worthies of his youth: “We hid affa couthy thochts aboot mony; a pucklie [few] were gye perjink; a pucklie were a thochtie orra [odd]; a pucklie fashious; an a pucklie affa ill-naiturt.”

Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.