Go
August 1st 2026
The Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) record a specific Scots use of go to mean “to like [or] want” something. The current first citation comes from Bill McGhee’s Cut and Run (1962): “Could you go a jag?”. Here a jag means a small drink rather than an injection.
In 1991, one correspondent in Edinburgh told DSL they could, “fair go a cup o tea”, whilst another in Glasgow said of someone on the radio, “I canna go his voice at aa”.
The term still has a tendency to be associated with food or drink, as in the following from the Sunday Mail in January 2020: “It’s January in Scotland, I don’t want shaved fennel or marinated fish. I could go a plate of puy lentil, cumin and coriander soup but the menu tells us that this food is to be ‘eaten shared, family style’”. Back in January 2003, the same paper recorded a lament from a new-year dieter: “Am exhausted. I could go a giant Toblerone but have a bath and read my Weight Watchers manual instead”.
Research has uncovered a much earlier example from the Daily Record in March 1941: “Two men were discovered alive in the wreckage of a Partick tenement after almost eight days. John Cormack … was found lying in a bed, and he astonished rescue workers by feebly waving his hand at them through the wreckage. ‘Could you go a cup of tea?’, Dr. Ian Mackay asked. ‘Aye, ah could fine,’ he responded”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
