SCOOT T SS W WO ROD ROD FT OHEFW TE HEEK WEEK

I was surprised to discover the word “neep” has yet to be discussed in this column! Time to stop that shameful neglect.

The word itself has a long history in Scots, as attested in the Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac. uk), cited earliest from the 15th century Scottish poet Robert Henryson: ‘It will not wyn zow worth ane widderit neip’ (‘it will not gain you the value of a withered neep’). The word derives ultimately from Latin n pus, but it is recorded in Anglo-saxon, the common ancestor of English and Scots; a millennium ago, naep was used in treatments for acne but by the 18th century it was a distinctively Scots usage.

The journalist Edward Topham (1751-1820) – later famous for his clothes, whiskers, and meteoritef ancying – records the word in his Letter from Edinburgh (1776): “A plate of small turnips, which they call ‘Neeps’.” Scots hasn’t followed English in the addition of the prefix ‘tur-‘, which seems to relate to ‘turn’, referring to the vegetable’s rounded shape.

Of course, the big question here is what vegetable a neep really is. DSL glosses the word as “turnip”, and Mrs Frazer’s Practical of Cookery (Edinburgh, 1800) as a parsnip; however when I first came to Scotland 40 years ago, the neeps in the staff canteen were what I would have called swedes. The vegetable arrived first in Scotland from Sweden in the 18th century, and used to be referred to (in English) as a Swedish turnip. It seems they’re ALL neeps!

Scots Word of the Week is written by Professor Jeremy Smith on behalf of Scottish Language Dictionaries. 9 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh

EH3 7AL.