SCOTS WORD OF THE WEEK

PARRY v. to waste time, to dawdle or delay in order to avoid action, equivocate THE first explanation given for parry is that the word is from the same root as the fencing command, and the above definition is one way in which the word developed a specific Scots meaning.

The first example of this meaning occurs in R. Cleland’s Inchbracken from Perthshire in 1883: “I’m for nae mair o’ yer parryin’ I’se tell ye.”

In the 20th century we have the following 1948 example from Berwickshire: “The other day a woman told me that she had parried aboot a’ mornin’.”

A further Scots meaning is “to meddle or tamper with, have dealings with, occupy oneself with, interfere with” is shown in this example from the Memoirs Of The Life And Writings Of Thomas Chalmers published between 1848 and 1852: “He would not trifle or delay or make parrying with temptation” and this from the St Andrews Gazette of 1st August 1862: “I thocht Cromwell had gien the folk o’ England a lesson no to paury owre muckle wi’ the cat’s tail, nor keep strokin’ her against the hair.”

The playwright Joe Corrie in his 1935 play The Income warns: “The next time that pain comes to your big tae, you get somebody to ’phone for the ambulance. The big tae is no’ a thing to parry wi’.”

This extended meaning is not recorded later than the 1948 example above but as with all Scots words, meaning and phrases this is by no means proof of extinction. Scots Word of the Week is written by Pauline Cairns Speitel of Scottish Language Dictionaries www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk, 25 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN (0131) 650 4146 mail@scotsdictionaries.org.uk. For £20 you can sponsor a word.