Roddy Lumsden reviews Say it in Scots

How should we Scots describe ourselves? Are we thowless or fu o smeddum? Are we thrawn or heich-kiltit? Smeekit or douce? Say it in Scots! is a new series of pocket books from Black and White which investigates aspects of Scotland – weather, wildlife, national character - via its own language. The books are compiled by Chris Robinson, Director of Scottish Language Dictionaries and others. They use the Scottish National Dictionary and A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue as their main sources, but cherry pick from folklore, literature and the media too for tidbits.

Wha's Like Us tries to pin down Scottish character via language. What's for sure is that we have a grand pile of words to choose from and many of them are more than synonyms of words in English. Take wersh – does it mean bland or sour? The meaning may have changed along the way but it's probably best to think of it as meaning blandly sour, or sourly bland? That favourite word glaikit, glossed here as foolish, senseless, is more complicated – it means looking foolish – you're not glaikit unless you're stupid and you look it!

This little book takes the seven deadly sins as its format and it must say something about us that there are 21 pages on pride and only seven on envy! When I read right through Warrack's 1903 Scots dictionary a few years back, it was clear that the sin of pride is the one we consider the least forgiveable – there are nearly as many terms related to the old business of pianos and kippers (see the book if you don't get that one) as there were for slovenly women and farming implements. Puftly, orguillouse, bigsy? Whit, us?

Another of the books, Scottish Place Names, also has an interesting format – rather than go through an A-Z list of interesting town names, as many books have before, it takes the country by landscape, listing words and terms which turn up in place names of forest and glens, or streets and bridges. You may know the meanings of muir, carse and pend, but there was plenty here new to me, much of it fascinating – anyone not up on their qwaws, whams, doachs and pobies, start here.

Scottish Wildlife plunders lots of fine words from old dictionaries. Scots terms for insects are particularly pleasing, including hairy grannie, meggie-mony-feet and bum-clock. You might be surprised to find a zebra making an appearance, but this is in order to point out that the word stripe didn't exist in spoken Scots, so we ought to talk about a zebra's straiks, spraings or strips.

The other book in this series is Scottish Weather, which trawls through the language of our misery but is surprisingly vibrant and throws up some beautiful words – moorkavie for a wild snowstorm, simmer-flaws for a heat-haze, scullgab for a basket-shaped cloud - alongside an alternative Beaufort Scale (going from lown to heerican), seasonal terms and some curious weather lore. These little books are informative and promote an interest in Scots, but they have a lot of charm too. Cantie stuff!