Slitter, Shoggle and Snook

Saturday's Doric hilarity was triggered by using a new word I learned from May when the Scottish contingent were down just before Christmas, slitter: to eat or drink messily. I remarked that we had had to go via the cottage to change my clothes because I had slittered down my pullover and Effie almost fell off her chair laughing.

Scottish vernacular has some very useful words that are either far more evocative or seem to fit a concept more neatly than any English word. My favourites, noting Mary's Ayrshire variant spellings, are:

• shoggle: To sway, move unsteadily, to rock, wobble, swing. As is "Went for a shuggle on the Clockwork Orange" [Took a bumpy ride on the Glasgow Metro]
• snoke: To sniff, smell, scent out, as a dog, snuff, poke with the nose. As in "When we let Cleo out of the cat basket she has a good snook round"
• pouk: To pluck, twitch, tug, pull sharply. As in "That cat of yours has put a pook in my jumper"

Definitions courtesy of the Dictionary of the Scots Language.

See previous posts: [Laldy], [Shove yer Granny], [Sark].