SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

It’s the first TiS of May, so I thought I’d ease us in with a nice easy one.

Here’s the snippet… (unedited first draft)

Adam reappeared, holstering his weapon. “It’s all clear.” He scowled at Elle. “What’s wrong now?”

“I can’t imagine. Maybe it’s that ever since you showed up in my life, everything has turned to shit. And now I’m stuck with you in my home.”

“Grab the chair.” He pointed at the antique library chair, completely ignoring her comments.

Elle carried the chair over to him only because she was intrigued to see what he was doing.

He hopped onto the chair, not bothering to transform it into steps, and stuck a tiny box above the door.

“What is that? What are you doing?”

“Gies a break, wummin. Since I met you, all you’ve done is bombard me with non-stop questions. Maybe if you’d directed some of that inquisitiveness at your boss, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“You’re right. I’d be dead already, and so would Dani.”

Running the Asset (Deniable Unit #1)

If you didn’t get the meaning for wummin from the snippet, it means woman. I’ve heard that using ‘woman’ in a sentence like the one above comes across as derogatory or sexist in English. In Scots, it’s not usually meant or taken that way. (Though, there are times when it is used exactly that way–the tone is normally the decider.)

That’s it for this week

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 wummin as it appeared in the quote.

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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!