SCOTS WORD OF THE WEEK

RATTLE

I WAS at my desk the other day when I was interrupted by a sudden rattling sound: hailstones. They didn’t last long, but their noise gave me the idea for this week’s word. The Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk) has a 1928 record of a charming children’s rhyme: “Rainy, rainy, rattlesteens, Dinna fa’ on me, Bit fa’ on Johnny Groat’s hoose Far across the sea”. A rattlesteen – with the characteristic north-eastern “steen” for more common “stane” – is an evocative Aberdeen word for a hailstone.

Of course, “rattle” is found in English as well, with a history going back to Anglo-saxon times when it is first recorded, as “hratele”, for plants whose seeds rattle in their pods. And it has developed metaphorical uses; the other day a politician’s distinctive tweets were said – according to his supporters at least – to have “rattled” his opponents. In Scots a whole range of special meanings are recorded, ranging from a reference to the distinctive Scots pronunciation of “r”, and (in Galloway) “a fox’s earth”, to “a sharp blow”: the great 19th-century lexicographer John Jamieson cites the expression “I’ll gie ye a rattle i’ the lug”. There are also some splendid compound words. Describing someone as rattle-tongued means that they are “voluble, chattering”, and there is a fine set of insults denoting folk whose foolishness expresses itself through such behaviour: rattle-cap, rattle-pan, rattle-skull. Given what Twitter has become of late, perhaps it should be rebranded as Rattle. Scots Word of the Week is written by Professor Jeremy Smith on behalf of Scottish Language Dictionaries. 9 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 7AL