Scottish words for rain: Smizzle, smirrel, huther and more
Last week I was in a group playing golf with Jim Corsar. It was raining a little; actually a very light rain. Jim, who is from Scotland said, “Back home we would call this rain smizzle.” Smizzle? He went on to say, “In Scotland we use many different words to describe rain.”
A few days later after consulting with his sister who still lives in Scotland Jim gave me a list of Scottish words for rain. Smirrel describes a very, very fine rain where spitting is a rain just a bit heavier than smirrel. Then you have our smizzle followed by dab and then huther, a light intermittent rain. Aitran is a piercing, cold, persistent rain and goselet describes a soaking, drenching downpour with pish-oot being an intense downpour. There’s more. A daggle is rain falling in torrents with kaavei denoting heavy driving rain, dreich clay is a gloomy rainy day and finally droohit rain is absolutely drenching.
I know we have all experienced on the golf course the Scottish defined rains at one time or another with smirrel, smizzle and huther probably being the most golfable rains. I know I’m not golfing in a kaavei, dreich clay or a droohit.
This plethora of Scottish
words for rain piqued my curiosity about how many different words golfers could use to describe the conditions of a green. I know fishermen have many words to describe ocean conditions. A few sheep are grazing would mean a few white caps. The sheep are grazing describes lots of white caps. Then you have lumpy, bumpy, big, smooth, slick and glassy. And more.
The first golfer I asked the “words to describe a green” question was Brook Shiefer last Sunday afternoon just unloading his clubs for a round. Brooks called the first green, well one of “those” names. His ball had rolled off the last time he played. He said number 6 had a bad complexion … acne. Numbers 4 and 16 were nice and 8, 9 and 18 were illusionary. Brad Gardner characterized number 1 as fast. Marshal Carr described some of the greens as deceptively quick and unpredictable. Jim Ehlers said they are either fast or slow with John Johansen saying number 4 was a little winter rough and 8 was flat. Chuck Allegrini used undulating to describe some of the greens and Dave Hautala said number 16 was his favorite.
Butch Carlstedt must have liked the greens last Sunday shooting 82 four strokes under his age and accumulating more Stableford points than all the other contestants.