Scots word of the month

PERJINK

Perjink means trim, neat, weel-turned-oot or smert in appearance. Mony o the quotations in the Scottish National Dictionary illustrate this definition, for example, in W. D. Latto’s Tammas Bodkin (1864), ‘[She] made me as clean an’ perjink as a new preen’, or Neil Munro’s Daft Days (1907), ‘ In his clothing he was always trim and tidy, quite perjink, as hereabouts we say’. It can refer tae fowk and things or places; the Banffshire Journal (9th February 1909) descrives a hoose as ‘jist a perfect pictur’ an’ a’thing aboot the place that clean and perjink’. Alternatively, it can mean careful and precise as in Lyon in Mourning (1775): ‘But how came you not to observe the address I gave you literally and perjinkly?’

There is naething guid or bad but thinkin maks it sae, and an excess o perjinkness can be less than attractive, tippin the meanin ower intae fussiness or priggishness. John Ruskin in Praeterita (1887) writes: ‘She had always what my mother called “perjinketty” ways, which made her typically an old maid in her later years’ and, in Alison Fleming’s Christina Strang, an owerfastidious person is ‘That perjink ye’d think butter wadna melt in her moo’.

Perjink can also be yaised as a noun in the sense o a nicety or fussy detail. Gin ye are ‘on yer perjinks’, ye are on yer verra best behaviour. John Galt, in Sir Andrew Wylie (1822) gies advice on ‘How to correct the press, and to put in the points, wi’ the lave o’ the wee perjinkities’.

Mair recently, Susan Rennie haes introduced the word tae a new generation o Scots in her sci-fi adventure story Kat and Doug on Planet Perjink (2002) whar the space travellers are taen roond the city o Fantooshopolis by ‘Cloot, the heid windae-dicter’.

Gin there are ony wirds here ye dinna ken, ye’ll find them aa at the Dictionary of the Scots Language website.

For mair wirds tak a luik at the Dictionary of Scots Language website or the Scottish Language Dictionaries website. Chris Robinson would like to hear from you about this or any other Scots word - email her at Scottish Language Dictionaries.