By Betty Kirkpatrick
Scots and English are linguistically related, both being descended from Anglo-Saxon. It is no wonder, then, that some words in one language are similar in form to words in the other. Thus, English has head and Scots has heid, pronounced to rhyme with seed.
Like head in English, heid means the part of the body that houses the brain, the highest part of something or someone who is in charge of something. For example, the head of a school in English is a heid in Scots.
However, in Scots this educational heid was, and is, often informally referred to as the heidie. English has not followed suit in this respect. There is no headie.
It is not really surprising that English does not have an equivalent of heidie. Words ending in –ie which indicate a diminutive form or an affectionate or familiar use, such as postie (a postman) or beastie (a small animal or insect), are much commoner in Scots than in English.
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Australian English, however, has adopted the Scots habit and indeed, the use of such diminutive forms is a marked feature of Australian speech. It, too, has postie and it has schoolie which, confusingly, can mean either a schoolteacher or a pupil. A similar confusion once existed in parts of Scotland where heid or heidie could refer to the person at the top of the class as well as to the head teacher. Presumably, it was quite easy to tell them apart if you saw them together. In Scots, someone who is at the top level of an organisation is often referred to as a heid yin (literally translated as a head one). If the person is even more important than such a position implies, the term high heid yin is used. The term does not usually convey any sense of admiration, since such people are not usually greeted with approval by the lower ranks. However, it can be used neutrally as well as disapprovingly. Not so heid bummer, which is bristling with disapproval or even contempt. A heid bummer is a person in charge, such as a senior manager or chief executive, a kind of Scots head honcho. It should not be confused with heid-banger, which means a very stupid person or a wild, crazy person. This has an English equivalent – head-banger – but, somehow, this does not sound quite as insulting as the Scots version. Heid, like head, can act as a verb. The verb originally meant to behead someone, although this meaning, like the practice, is now archaic. It can also mean to lead or be the head of, or to reach the summit of a hill or mountain. However, the verb heid is now mostly associated with one of our main national obsessions, football. For those whose obsessions do not include football, heid means to hit the ball with your head. This practice is, like the headmaster (see above), known as heidie, and it has given rise to the expression heid-the-baw (with baw meaning ball). Here I become slightly puzzled. Some reference books indicate that heid-the-baw is used as a kind of nickname which can be used affectionately or to indicate that the person so-called is stupid. I have always heard it used, with no suggestion of affection, of someone who is considered to be extremely arrogant. What does it mean to you?Betty Kirkpatrick is the former editor of several classic reference books, including Chambers Twentieth Century 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.
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