Dictionaries of the Scots Language
Dictionars o the Scots Leid

Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)

Hide Quotations Hide Etymology

Abbreviations Cite this entry

About this entry:
First published 2005 (SND, online supplement).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.

MORNINGSIDE, n. Name of a residential district of Edinburgh, often used to describe the over-refined, supposedly affected speech of (some of) the inhabitants, and also their behaviour, attitudes, etc. Mainly attrib. Cf. Kelvinside.Sc. 1973 A. J. Aitken ed. Lowland Scots 10:
The Scottish Augustans seem to have bequeathed us an inferiority complex and the Morningside accent.Sc. 1976 Scotsman 24 Dec 1/7:
He talks awful tosted breed, if ye unnerstan' my Morningside accent.Sc. 1990 Guardian 1 Sep :
Yet despite the record, ladies with impeccable Morningside accents defended Becky Sharp to the death.Sc. 1997 Scotland on Sunday 17 Aug :
The odour was tart and nippy, suggestive of Morningside ladies, or spinster schoolteachers.Sc. 1999 Sunday Times 2 May :
Edinburgh is the least Scots place. That Morningside accent sounds like a Swede trying to talk Surrey.Sc. 1999 Scotsman 17 May 20:
She emigrated to the US in the early Sixties and continued her acting interests, notably as a vibrant lead in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie for Theatre Memphis. She was a natural for the part, despite her Glasgow roots, and could project a fairly accurate Edinburgh Morningside accent.m.Sc. 1999 Christopher Brookmyre in Susie Maguire and Amanda Hargreaves Something Wicked: Scottish Crime Fiction 4:
And behind her were a couple of Morningside Ladies muttering about whichever Fringe show had been singled out for moral opprobrium (and a resultant box office boost) this year by Conservative Councillor Moira Knox.Sc. 2002 Herald 20 Dec 15:
"The difference between a Morningside accent and a Kelvinside accent is that Glasgow is a funny city, where people are very demonstrative and Edinburgh is a very undemonstrative city where there's not much humour. ... "Sc. 2003 Guardian 30 Aug 14:
But why do the Scots tend to go straight to English? In the days when they had more than one MP, the Scottish Tories all had English accents, with the sole exception of Teddy Taylor. Mind you, there is the magnificently strangulated Morningside accent from Edinburgh, as in "Sex: bags used for carrying coal."Sc. 2004 Sunday Times 14 Nov 1:
"Well, there is an element of truth to it," Corbett says in that dry, Morningside accent with the in-built chuckle, buttering a bread roll with all the sadistic vigour of his kind.

Add Comb.: Morningside speed, Informal name for cocaine.Edb. 1993 Irvine Welsh Trainspotting (1994) 74:
Mitch lines up some Morningside speed, cocaine, on the formica-top table.em.Sc. 1997 Ian Rankin Black & Blue (1999) 12:
He'd done most of the major drugs in his time: Billy Whizz, skag, Morningside speed. He was on a meth programme now. On dope, he was a small problem, an irritation; off dope, he was pure radge. He was Mental.em.Sc. 1999 Ian Rankin Dead Souls 4:
'Salisbury Crag' has become rhyming slang in the city. It means skag, heroin. 'Morningside Speed' is cocaine. A snort of coke just now would do him the world of good, but wouldn't be enough.