Thursday, February 7, 2008

I Need Scottish Expletives!

I am so OCD, that while doing rewrites on chapter 2, I stopped and researched for almost 2 hours. What could be so important you ask? Scottish cursing of course!

Most people that have even a tad of knowledge about the Scottish culture, know that they have a colorful slang all their own. My problem is, I DON'T KNOW ANY OF IT.

Any suggestions on sites or even words would be most appreciated and helpful. I did find an interesting site, Urban Dictionary, but it seems to be definitions posted by readers, and although there were definitely some VERY interesting ones (i.e. ***Scottish curse:unusually small penis.
"Oh man! I went out with George last night, and I swear he had the Scottish curse! It looked like an acorn resting on his balls!"),entertaining, yes, helpful....not so much.

***I will NOT be using that in my book BTW.

I did find and purchase a book on Scottish insults, "Awa' An' Bile Yer Heid ", hoping to glean some good stuff from it when it gets here, I'll let you know about that after reading it.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions you'd like to throw my way!

Terri

3 comments:

Mary Duncan said...

Terri,

I've been in that very same boat! Cursing in the 18th century was very different than it is today. I have also been searching, but to no avail, to find something that might make someone's eyebrows raise, but can't find anything of the sort.

Maybe we should try calling a pub in the Hebrides. I'd be willing to bet we'd get an earful then!!!

Good luck with that, and let me know what you come up with.

Mary

TerriRainer said...

Mary,

I did find the word "Crivens" which is an old Scottish curse meaning "A Scots expression of surprise or shock."

Crivens! Ma kilt's on fire!

Feel free to use that one, but that's all I've found thus far.

Terri

Skeeter said...

Scottish cursing. I'd never even considered such a thing before. That's interesting ... and funny too.