I’ve just discovered a “new” Scottish online newspaper that’s been around for nearly 3 years but which I hadn’t heard of until yesterday. It’s the Caledonian Mercury, which was launched in January 2010.
Their Heritage pages include a section on Useful Scots Words that looks very tempting. I discovered the Caledonian Mercury itself (I wonder what they call themselves on a day-to-day basis: the Mercury? the Cal Merc?) when I was looking for a definition of “dwam” for my “empty-nest” post. I found not just a definition but a whole article on dwam written by Betty Kirkpatrick, who is
…the former editor of several classic reference books, including Chambers Twentieth Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus. She is also the author of several smaller language reference books, including The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés published by Bloomsbury, and a series of Scots titles, including Scottish Words and Phrases, Scottish Quotations, and Great Scots, published by Crombie Jardine. She is a former columnist of the Herald.
Betty has also written an article on “hunker”, a word that I wrote about recently in Coping with Sandy: Hunkering and coorie-ing.
If you’re interested in Scottish news, news interpreted from a Scottish perspective, or Scottish words, then the Caledonian Mercury might be worth checking out (I say “might be” because I haven’t really checked it out myself yet).
Have a look, and let us know what you think.
By Marian Dougan
2 Responses
What an excellent find! thank you
I know – it looks like a good read. But I don’t think their marketing can be up to scratch, if nobody’s heard of them.