Posts by Fiona McPherson
Burns suppers: neeps, tatties, and A Toast to the Lassies
January 25th is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns, when Burns suppers are held in commemoration of the Scottish poet and lyricist. Despite being the national bard of Scotland, his influence spreads much further than those national borders, and his works have been translated into many languages including Russian and Czech. There are [...]
Where does the expression ‘to mind your Ps and Qs’ come from?
If you have you ever been told to mind your Ps and Qs, it might have struck you as a rather odd thing to do. The concept seems reasonable enough– behaving well and not giving offence – but quite what the letters P and Q have to do with this is a little more mysterious. [...]
First feet, black buns, and hansels: the language of Scottish New Year’s traditions
Get up, goodwife, and shake your feathers, And dinna think that we are beggars; For we are bairns come out to play, Get up and gie’s our hogmanay My grandma taught me this ditty longer ago than I care to remember, and it served as my first introduction to the word Hogmanay. Nowadays, many people [...]
How to amuse friends and bamboozle people without even knowing it – reflections of a Scot down south
When people ask where I am from, the answer “Scotland” is not what they are expecting – that much is evident from my accent, which I haven’t lost after 14 years down south. For the most part, people find it easy enough to understand me – my Scots brogue isn’t all that impenetrable. Yet on [...]
Remember, remember… pyrotechnic displays that amaze (and terrify)
It’s a custom peculiar to Britain, but for school children (and some adults) all over the country, as November begins, the following words march round and round. Remember remember the fifth of November Gunpowder, treason and plot Confession time. I have an uneasy relationship with fireworks, something which became apparent in early childhood. As a [...]
Are you sitting comfortably?
Things look a little different when you consider the question from a USA v UK perspective. In terms of the UK, sofa was by far the word of choice, being 3 times as popular as its nearest rival settee. Couch limped in third, and perhaps the most surprising of all [...]
To describe or prescribe, that is the question (with apologies to Shakespeare)
Regular readers of this blog may remember a recent poll in which we posed the following question: Do you think dictionaries should: Describe language as it is being used Prescribe how language should be used Be a mixture of prescriptive and descriptive The results were as follows: 70.27 % were in favour of a mixture, [...]
Brassies, bunkers, and bogeys: celebrating The Open
The game of golf has a long established history – the OED records the word as far back as 1457. From the moment when the first ball was addressed and the subsequent first putt was sunk, the English language has been enriched with golfing terms, some of which are illustrated in the accompanying word cloud. [...]
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