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Tuesday 1 November 2016

Thing Not To Be Today: tattie-peelin

Tattie is a Scots word for potato, and peelin is the same as peeling.

So what is tattie-peelin?

Well, in Scotland, tattie-peelin usually means speaking pretentiously, affectedly, or in a high-falutin' manner.

Of course, the trouble with the word pretentious is that its use is quite, well, pretentious - and the same sort of objection also comes with the words affected and high-falutin.

But tattie-peelin. Oh, that's an insult we can throw from a safe place with maximum scorn.

Book reviews? Och, half the time they're just tattie-peelin.

Ooh, I feel better already.

Thing Not To Do Today: tattie-peelin. This is Scots, but how it came to mean pretentious or prim I can't discover. My best guess is that it's something to do with the idea of being more concerned with surfaces and appearances than content.




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