Sitting in my baffies

Here's another picture of the woobie, a word which has now entered my vocabulary along with "go dights" for green traffic lights.

The other day we were having a family blog-related discussion about language, sparked off by our son's using the word "outwith". I don't think that's a word that's survived in Standard English but it's quite common here. It means "outside" though is often used in a non-physical sense, eg "If you have a medical emergency outwith the normal consulting hours...." or "It's not outwith the bounds of possibility that... " I remember being at a Book Festival event featuring Garrison Keillor and he mentioned his surprise at seeing this word on a notice: something like "Please do not stand outwith the area marked for queueing".

"Queue", there's another word - fine in Standard English but not, I think, in American English. When my friend and I went to America in 1970, we had to go to a Social Security office to get a Social Security number and asked a group of people, "Are you in the queue?" Incomprehension on all sides. Mind you, our accents probably didn't help.

It's funny that even in Scotland we don't use "inwith", but instead "within". And yet we no longer use "without" to mean "outside" except in the hymn "There is a green hill far away / Without a city wall", which was always confusing when I was a small girl.

"Bauchles" is a Scottish word. It refers to baggy but comfortable old shoes. I'm fond of wearing bauchles myself. And Mr Life says "baffies" for slippers, though he's from a different part of Scotland - a whole - oohh - fifty miles away. It's not a word that my family would have used before meeting Mr Life, but my baffies are on my feet as I type.

Finally today, let's consider the word "daidlie", which means napkin. I had no idea how to spell it so I've just looked it up. I was offered: daidle, daddle, dedle, daidlie, daidle and dedley. It may come from dialect English dwile, dwoile, dowly, meaning a washing rag, and Middle Dutch dwele, a towel.

So now we know.

It was a lovely day today - sunny (though not actually warm) - and I got the garden tidied up and the grass cut. It made me feel fair joco; or as you might say, really quite jolly.