Scots word of the week

HUDDERIE

LOCKDOWN has been tough for so many of us, but I hadn’t realised quite how important a haircut was for morale. Home hairdressing has, for me at least, never really “cut it” and I fear that – when I finally manage to get professional attention – I will be much more shaggy than I care to be. In other words, I am becoming exceptionally hudderie.

According to the citations in the Dictionaries of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk), the adjective hudderie first appears at the beginning of the 19th century, with the general meaning of slovenly or untidy. Hudderie seems to derive from a slightly older verb – hudder, itself a form of hod, which can mean “to jog along on horseback … of a poor rider”. Robert Burns, in The Holy Fair, refers to how “Here farmers gash, in ridin graith, Gaed hoddan by their cotters”. DSL also notes the noun howd “a lurching, rocking movement”, especially at sea; the expression “Having a howd round St Abb’s” is recorded from Berwickshire in 1901.

Hudderie, meaning general untidiness, is fairly widespread in Scots, occasionally found in charming reduplicated forms. The Dictionary cites a 1925 Dumfriesshire reference to “A hudderie-dudderie lot about Glenscobin”. Hudderie, with reference to hair, appeared rather later and seems to be, with this more specialised meaning, a northeastern term. The earliest entry is from Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk (1871), a powerful novel by the radical writer William Alexander. JEREMY SMITH