By Betty Kirkpatrick
The English word belch does not sound at all discreet. This is fair enough. The action it describes is not at all discreet either. Expelling air from your stomach loudly through your mouth, whether accidentally or deliberately, is bound to draw attention to you.
To me, the Scots word rift does sound rather discreet, although it actually describes the same in-your-face action as belch. Somehow it conjures up a picture of someone politely trying to suppress the full blast of the sound, perhaps behind a strategically placed hand.
But this is fancy on my part. To rift is but to belch and a rift is a belch. The word rift, which was first recorded in the middle of the 15th century, has come down to us via Middle English from Old Norse rypta.
At one point in its history rift could describe wind being expelled from either end, not just the mouth. I have seen expelling wind from the nether end described as "to break wind backwards". Now there is a discreet expression!
The poet Allan Ramsay makes reference to this sense of rift in his Collection of Scots Proverbs (1736). "It is a sign of a hale heart to rift at the rumple", goes the proverb. Rumple in Scots is a word for the buttocks.
Belching is said to be a way of conveying your compliments to the chef in certain cultures. I am not sure whether riftin ever had the same interpretation in Scotland, but riftin fou (rifting full) means completely full up, suggesting that the consumer had enjoyed the food.
The verb to rift had the additional meaning of to brag or to exaggerate your achievements, success etc, and this gave rise to the adjective rifty, overly wordy. To rift oot once meant to emit through the mouth as if belching and this applied particularly to the issuing of threats.
To rift up described regurgitated food coming back up into the mouth, as when belching. Figuratively, this phrase could be used of something that you would rather forget coming back into your mind to haunt you, a regurgitated memory so to speak.
Rift can also function as a noun with meanings corresponding to that of the verb. Thus, rift can be an act of belching and brunt rift refers to that painful condition known in English as heartburn. To hae (have) the rift o describes the unpleasant experience of having food repeating on you. This is even worse if the food was not to your taste first time round.
The noun rift can also refer to a piece of unsubstantiated bragging or to rather verbose flowery language. If you’re indulging in a good old lively chat, that can also be a rift.
A more formal or technical English equivalent of rift is eructate. I mention this, partly to show off and partly to have an excuse to mention another Scots word.
Eructate is derived from the Latin verb ructare, to spew out. It has been suggested that this may have some connection with Scots reek and related words from other northern languages, such as German rauch. Scots for smoke, reek is something that is spewed or belched out of a chimney, as opposed to out of a body orifice.
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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