In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle reviews a new treasury of 1,000 Scottish words from Robin A. Crawford
A clishmaclaver is a Scottish word meaning ‘the passing on of idle gossip, sometimes in a book’. A collieshangle denotes a row or fight in which two people bark at each other. Red Biddy is a term for the nasty cocktail of red wine and methylated spirits drunk by the most impoverished of alcoholics. A tatterdemalion is an ill-clad person dressed in rags.