Scottish words — Words of the week

Picture the scene. You’re at a party (not that I ever go to parties anymore. But I do remember them. Vaguely). You’re making small talk with someone you’ve met a few times, but whose name currently escapes you. Then disaster strikes. Your partner/friend/someone else you know comes over to join the conversation. They both look expectantly at you, waiting for introductions. You hesitate just a bit too long. Panic… PANIC…!

Congratulations, you’ve just tartled.

This lovely Scottish verb is the act of hesitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name. It’s important to note that it’s the hesitation that ‘tartle’ is referring to here – not the act of bad memory itself. If you do this type of thing a lot, then you can be described as ‘tartlesome’.

Sadly ‘tartle’ hasn’t taken off as much as it should, so there’s not much info on its origins. It’s possible that it comes from an Old English word, ‘tealtrian’, which means to totter, shake, stagger or generally be uncertain.

So there you have it. Next time you find yourself trying to introduce someone whose name you’ve forgotten, just fill that awkward silence with ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve just tartled.’ And hope no one thinks that means you’ve broken wind.

I used this word in last week’s post, and a friend pointed out that it’s a bit of an odd one. So I thought I’d look into it a bit further. And it turns out it has a pretty interesting backstory (so thanks, Lorna).

Jiggery-pokery means dishonest or suspicious activity. It hit the headlines in 2015 when American Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used it in a legal argument against his colleagues’ reasoning in a decision about Obamacare, accusing them of ‘interpretive jiggery-pokery’. This quintessentially British phrase isn’t used that much outside of our shores, and certainly not in American legal writing (although Scalia has form for using these types of words – apparently he wrote the word ‘argle-bargle’ in another decision previously). The earliest-known use of jiggery-pokery in writing was in the Berkshire Chronicle in 1845. But it goes back much earlier than that.

The first part comes from a Scottish word, ‘jouk’, which means to twist your body to avoid a blow. This later became ‘joukery’ or ‘jookery’ to describe underhand dealing or trickery. The second part comes from ‘pawky’, another Scottish word which means something is artfully shrewd (a ‘pawk’ is a trick). By 1686, some bright spark combined the two to come up with ‘joukery-pawkery’, used to refer to clever trickery or sleight of hand. You can find this in Sir Walter Scott’s 1816 novel The Black Dwarf (which doesn’t sound very PC):

‘…I canna shake mysell loose o’ the belief that there has been some jookery-paukery of Satan’s in a’ this…’

It wasn’t long before joukery-pawkery morphed into the more familiar jiggery pokery we get today.

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering, ‘argle-bargle’ is copious but meaningless talk or writing, or waffle.)