A Williewaught o’ Scots

Chambers online dictionary acquires sonsy Scottish accent

Chambers Press Release
Edinburgh, 21 January 2009

For your Burns Supper, you’ll have to go and get your messages – the haggis, neeps and tatties are a given, but what about Selkirk bannock and some tablet? Make sure you get a guid whisky, but dinna be an eejit and hae a drappie too many, or you’ll end up blootered wi’ a sair heid the morn!


With Burns Night fast approaching in this Year of Homecoming, it’s a beezer time to be in Scotland. The editors of The Chambers Dictionary in Edinburgh are celebrating this great occasion by adding audio pronunciations for hundreds of Scottish words to the Chambers Reference Online dictionary at www.chambersreference.com – adding another braw element to its rich coverage of Scottish vocabulary.

With over 3500 Scottish entries, you’ll find words like messages and tablet, familiar words in the English language that have a unique meaning here. It has those Scottish words that are so familiar that we often don’t realize they’re Scottish at all, like outwith and ming, the source of ‘minging’ and ‘minger’. And, of course, you’ll find words that are distinctively Scottish, like tourie, capernoity and the nation’s favourite, numpty.

These Scottish entries can help non-Scots tell the difference between their gaberlunzies and their shauchles, and now the newly-added click-to-play pronunciations on Chambers Reference Online mean they can even slip a few Scottish words into their own conversation.

And while Jeremy Paxman might not be too joco about it, The Chambers Dictionary will continue to revel in the language of Burns with words like duddie weans, outler and, ironically, cramboclink: the ever-eloquent Bard’s preferred, beautifully expressive word for ‘rhyming doggerel’.

So if you’ve ever wondered how you say cailleach, ramgunshoch or spleuchan, or what they mean for that matter, log on to www.chambersreference.com for a one-month free trial. Editor-in-chief of The Chambers Dictionary, Mary O’Neill, commented: ‘It’s a sair fecht, a’ this editing! But it’s worth it to make sure that we have so many wonderful Scottish words at Chambers Reference Online.’

Notes

• Audio pronunciations now live
• One month free trail available, normal price £15 per year, giving full access to
• The Chambers Dictionary and The Chambers Thesaurus online
• For more information, contact Mary O’Neill on 0131 556 5929

**ends**