Wee Man

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Dorothy. I’m calling from Fort Worth, Texas, but I’m originally from Glasgow, Scotland.

Well, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it for a long while and finally, finally called in.

We’re glad you did, Dorothy. How can we help?

As I said, I grew up in Glasgow, Scotland. I’ve lived in Texas for 44 years, but I grew up saying a lot of things, phrases, things that I just said, never knowing where they came from, never questioning where they came from until I’ve lived here.

And I wondered if you would be able to tell me, you know, where they did come from.

One of them is like, I mean, I know what they are. I know what they mean, but I don’t know where they originated.

One of the things that I say is an exclamation is in the name of the wee man. And another one is somebody is, you call somebody a blathering skite. That means they talk a lot.

We’ll hook you up with some answers, and I’m going to give you a great resource after this for some Scots language, all right?

All right.

That would be great.

One at a time. A wee man, in the name of the wee man, is a minced oath where you’re referring to the devil. It’s in the name of the devil. Another term for the devil is the wee man.

Oh, I thought it was baby Jesus.

No, yeah.

No, according to what I’ve read, and there’s a number of euphemisms. Well, in Scots, apparently, you can say in the name of anything and make it sound like an oath. You can say in the name of this coffee, I’m not going to work today or whatever.

I never heard that one.

Well, I made that one up, but it’s just in the name of whatever.

Oh, you mean I should stop calling my grandson the wee man?

No, that’s a different wee man.

No, that’s the thing. It’s a different wee man. You’ve got two meanings of it. The wee man is the little guy, and then he’s also the devil. But maybe he’s both. I don’t know.

No, no, no, no. He’s a sweetie. He’s perfect.

I’m sure he is.

Now, a blathering skite, if there’s anything more Scots in the world, I don’t know what it is. A skite is a rascal or a scoundrel of some kind. And to blether is to talk incessantly or loquitiously.

And in the United States, we actually have blather skite. We say it with an instead of an eh, blatherskite.

I’ve heard that. We have it here. I’ve heard that here, blathering.

Yes, exactly. We caught it very soundly during the American Revolution from a song that was really common among the soldiers called Maggie Lauder, and it’s got the word in it, and it’s been strong in the United States ever since.

It’s really interesting. Outside of blatherskite, most Americans wouldn’t say to blather and definitely would not use the word skite. It’s just not really any part of the vernacular here.

No, most people are, yes, most people are confounded when I see blethering skite.

Yeah.

So there it all is in a nutshell, but let me tell you my secret source for all things Scots language, and I’m mentioning this to everyone because a few years ago they had some funding problems. I threw in my few dollars and some others did too, and it’s now going quite soundly.

And this is the dictionary of the Scots language, which is free online. It has a newly designed interface. It’s by Scots, for Scots, with lots of Scots content. It combines all of the great lexical works of the Scots language all into one resource, and you can look up just about anything that you can think of, and it’s probably in there with citations and historical information and notes on usage.

Thank you. I appreciate that. You’ve really helped.

Oh, yeah.

Glad to do it.

She says with a tone of surprise.

The brother Scots came through.

Thanks, Dorothy.

Thank you.

Bye bye.

No matter where you’re from in the world, if you’ve come to the United States, you’ve brought linguistic baggage. Would you like to open that up so we can all go through your laundry together?

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