Welcome to the second post in the revamped Things in Scots series. In this incarnation of TiS, I’m sharing the Scots language found in my upcoming romantic suspense novel, Running the Asset.
My aims for this series are to share my first language and to sneak in a wee bit of beta testing. Think of it as a cheaty way of making sure that the Scots words are easy to understand via context rather than explanations. Unless the explanation route is natural to the story and/or leads to sexy times (that could/might/totally will happen).
This week’s snippet might look familiar to some of you. Part of it appeared on the site in October last year in full/braid Scots as part of the Scotstober challenge for the word dreich.
Here’s the snippet… (unedited first draft)
Heat. Flames. The bone-shaking roar. The blast ripped through the air, knocking Adam hard to the ground. He tried to lever himself off the ground, but his vision was doing a slow spin to the relentless ringing in his lugs.
He tried again only to have the wind knocked out of him by something sent barrelling by the stampedeing crowd. With rough hands, Adam rolled the dead weight off him to the pavement. Shit. The terror stricken eyes of a teenaged lassie stared up at him from a blood stained face.
Running the Asset (Deniable Unit #1)
Okay, this is actually a Scots word twofer. First is lugs which is the Scots for ears. The second is lassie, which I think most folks know is one of the many Scots words for girl.
And that’s it
I hope you enjoyed this post. I’d love to hear your comments on how easy or difficult it was to get the gist of lugs and lassie as they appeared in the quote.
I said last time that this wasn’t exactly a challenge series, but I’ve decided to go with making it one. So, if you find yourself inspired by the Scots words I share, add the tag #TiS or #ThingsinScots to your writing/art/photo post and drop your link in the comments.
If you want to see more Scots posts, check out the original series, Things in Scots.
Thanks for reading. Take care, and I hope to see you next week for more Scots on Manuscript Mondays!
Lassie was easy. Lugs might be confusing; my mind read lungs and that made no sense, so it stopped me. Re-reading, I figured it out.
Thanks for the feedback, Judy. I’ll keep that in mind for the edits!
My name rhymes with a cocktail: My revamped Thing in Scots is back for week two. This week is a twofer. #amwriting #scots #romanticsuspense susantbraithwaite.com/2022/01/10/thi… via twitter.com
Lugs have been used in my family since I can remember. More often or not lug holes was said. I didn’t know it was Scots though. You’re a bonnie lassie for showing us a few words 🙂
Why thank you, ya sonsie loon! (sonsie=handsome; loon=boy) And, thanks for the feedback. I thought there’d be some crossover with lugs in Australia and Canada with the Scots being “sent” to both countries.
Thanks Susan Loon here is someone who is a bit nutty
loon = lunatic, so at first I went “hey!!!” 😂
Yeah, laddie is more common in Central Scots. Loon/loonie is the Doric for boy (quine for girl). My dad was a Doric (dialect) speaker–North East Scotland–and I spoke it from my early teens and it just kind of stuck. But, I see now how it must have landed initially 😬 😁
I’m with Bushboy here. I’ve known the word lugs forever and lassie, or at least lass, is an often-used Yorkshire word, so I grew up with that as well. Not sure if stampeeding has a double ‘e’ though?
So far I’ve got two out of three with lugs being a known word! Yay! Great eye for the double e there. Three times through Grammarly Pro version didn’t even catch it. Then again, it spends most of its time telling me that native English speakers wouldn’t write [insert Standard Scottish English grammar]. 🤣
My sharp eye extends to everything apart from my own work! I’ve found that having Word read it back to me works quite well. It’s easier to hear the silly mistakes than read them.
It’s always the same isn’t it.
My favourite editing trick when I used to do editing for others was to read the entire MS backwards, paragraph by paragraph, aloud.
For my blog, I’m not too on it. I run it through Grammarly a few times and walk away. I’m trying to train the perfectionism out of myself because I’d never post anything, ever.
Besides, mistakes will ALWAYS sneak by even the keenest eye.
I knew lassie and were able to work out what lugs meant!
Oh, that’s great, Aletta! Thank you for letting me know 🤗