Talk:skulduggery

What does "Scottish" refer to?
According to this page, this word originated as "an alteration of Scottish sculdudrie" or "sculduddery".

Yet according to Wikipedia, there is no such language as Scottish. Instead, there are two different Scotland-related languages: Scottish Gaelic and Scots language.

Which of these two languages do the words sculdudrie and sculduddery come from?


 * Thanks for asking. Neither: Scottish English, aka Lowlands Scots. DCDuring TALK 09:33, 16 September 2009 (UTC)


 * If it's "Scottish English", then your saying "neither" may be correct. But "Lowlands Scots" is not the same as "Scottish English". The latter is the variety of standard English used in Scotland. Scots (of which Lowlands Scots is a specific dialect) refers to the native West Germanic varieties of Scotland. These are usually considered a "language" in their own right, but one might as well consider them dialects of "English in the broader sense". At any rate, the distinction between "Scottish English" (standard English in Scotland) and "Scots" (native dialects in Scotland) is quite a strict one. So the question remains whether "sculdudrie" was originally a Scots word, that is one that originated in native spoken Scots, or whether it is indeed from formal Scottish English. The latter seems unlikely, but who knows.


 * The earliest cite in the OED is from 1714: "But I'm seer there's na sike honest People here, or there wou'd na be so muckle Sculdudrie". I leave it to others' opinion as to whether that's Scots or dialect Scottish English. I don't see the difference.    D b f  i  r  s   13:55, 22 August 2019 (UTC)