A Record of the Needle

‘Dreich’ tops poll as nation’s favourite Scots word

23/01/2013

"Ahead of Burns Night on 25th January, a new poll has revealed ‘dreich’ as Scotland’s favourite word in the Scots language.

The You Gov survey asked adults across the country to select their number one Scots word from a list of options including some of Robert Burns’ own favourites. With 23 per cent of the public vote, and perhaps proving Scotland's love for talking about the weather, the word ‘dreich’ meaning ‘wet’, ‘cold’ and ‘gloomy’ trumped other classics such as ‘glaikit’ (20%), ‘blether’ (12%) and ‘crabbit’ (11%)."

I found this article on the Scottish Government web-site, and indeed dreich was a popular and much used word at work today...

And so we're indoors - for some reason, I've had a line from Pump up the Volume running around in my head over the last week or so - 'put the needle on the record when the drumbeats go like this...' and maybe this has subliminally inspired today's entry.