To love the word outwith

[en0la]

I think it's a great word which is grossly underused outside its native Scotland.

In fact I could say I've gotten rather fond of it.

Ah yes I use it a lot. I only recently realised it was a Scottish thing (lived there from age 3-22)

I'm Scottish and use it all the time.

Bloody hell - this whole thread (and the ‘gotten’ thread) makes me want to move to Scotland.

I use it a lot in error messages as a software developer. I only realised it wasn't in common use when a client took the piss out of it.

It is the same as "not within", but "outside" wouldn't be quite right.

"The morn's morn" = day after tomorrow eg "I'm going on holiday the morn's morn"

"Yous" = plural you eg "Are yous going to the party?"

But, they are both colloquial and wouldn't be used by someone who is generally considered to be well spoken

But that person would use "Outwith"

Talking of Lost Words, one I love that was quoted in Bill Bryson’s brilliant Mother Tongue, is ‘ugsome’ (ugly).

I’ve read of ‘grinsard’ (greensward, as in grass) but never actually heard it.
When do you ever hear ‘ragamuffin’ or ‘flibbertigibbet’ any more? Or ‘scamp’? That last was once a popular dog’s name AFAIK.

@TooExtraImmatureCheddar

My favourite Scots phrase is “through the house”. Where’s DD? Oh, she’s through the house.

English DH also doesn’t know what I mean by “back of 5”. What time is it? Back of 5. Used only when the time isn’t urgent - like I wouldn’t say “oh shit, it’s back of 9, the kids are late for school!”

I'm glad your brought up that phrase, I've never been quite sure what it meant- is "back of 5" "nearly 5 " eg 4.50 , or is is just after 5?

I think the old English equivalent was “without”. As in “without a city wall”, in the hymn There is a green hill, and also in the names of churches, such as “St Botolph without the wall”, which is just outside the walls of the city of London.
Over the years, “without” came to mean “lacking” rather more than meaning “not within”, so we tend to use beyond, outside, etc now instead.
I’m English but have lived in Scotland for 45 years. I remember the consultant at a London hospital being amused, decades ago, by the letter from my Scots teaching hospital thanking him for providing placements for students “outwith” Scotland. He’d never come across the word.

Just after Delphinium

Ooh lovely word. Until now it has been outwith my vocabulary

Does anyone know of any other uses of "yester"?

As in we use yesterday and yesteryear, but not yesterweek or yestermonth?

(for funsies, I use this in my own fantasy books indiscriminately for last or previous - yesterwife being my favourite for ex!)

I love outwith. I used it once in a university essay and was told not to use 'archaic language'

DelphiniumBlue, it means just after 5 eg 5.05/5.10.

Another non-Scottish 'outwith' fan here. I try to smuggle it into stuff.

Slight digression, but also a big fan of plural forms of 'you' (youse, y'all etc) and wish they weren't surrounded with such snobbery by 'standard' British English speakers.

thecatsthecatsthecats looked up an yester is (kind of obvious now) from German Gestern. They use it a lot more than we do as a stand alone descriptor eg gestern abend (evening) morgen (morning) woche (week) etc etc but I don’t think it forms part of a compound word like our ‘yetsterday’. This is odd, if right, because Germans love long complicated compound words.

@MitheringSunday

Another non-Scottish 'outwith' fan here. I try to smuggle it into stuff.

Slight digression, but also a big fan of plural forms of 'you' (youse, y'all etc) and wish they weren't surrounded with such snobbery by 'standard' British English speakers.

I never heard of 'outwith' before, but I like it.

Re plural 'you'. I say 'ye' and my DH says 'yous' as we're from different parts of Ireland.

@HeronLanyon

thecatsthecatsthecats looked up an yester is (kind of obvious now) from German Gestern. They use it a lot more than we do as a stand alone descriptor eg gestern abend (evening) morgen (morning) woche (week) etc etc but I don’t think it forms part of a compound word like our ‘yetsterday’. This is odd, if right, because Germans love long complicated compound words.

Yes, that's interesting.

captainmarica It is the same as "not within", but "outside" wouldn't be quite right.

That’s it exactly - the within is very much in the speaker’s mind also.

I also love 'outwith'. English, but have lived in Scotland for many years. And 'aye'. Both slightly different to their more common English equivalents.

Yes Beverley from Birmingham ,my HT, who made me rewrite my whole class school reports because I used "is able/ not able to apply these skills out with this context"
Handwritten reports .

@HeronLanyon

thecatsthecatsthecats looked up an yester is (kind of obvious now) from German Gestern. They use it a lot more than we do as a stand alone descriptor eg gestern abend (evening) morgen (morning) woche (week) etc etc but I don’t think it forms part of a compound word like our ‘yetsterday’. This is odd, if right, because Germans love long complicated compound words.

Germans don't say 'gestern Woche' (at least not in standard German - not excluding regional variants I'm not aware of) - but when it refers to a time of day they do (gestern Abend, Nachmittag etc.) - and incidentally use 'heute' (today) in the same way.

It doesn't form a compound word like 'yesterday', but 'the day before yesterday' is a compound word (vorgestern), and even 'three days ago' (vorvorgestern). It also has an adjectival form - 'gestrig' or 'vorgestrig' - which can either be used literally ('die gestrige Veranstaltung' = 'yetserday's event') or metaphorically to mean 'old-fashioned, backward'.

mithering aber selfverstandlich ! (Sp).
Veilen danke.

Thanks, MitheringSunday. That's very interesting. My German is rusty.

Selbst I think not the very English self

:)

(Lived here half my life - hope I haven't come across 'oberlehrerhaft' (another great German word, translating literally as 'over-teacher-like', meaning 'holding forth on one's superior knowledge'))