Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)
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First published 1956 (SND Vol. IV). Includes material from the 2005 supplement.
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
Quotation dates: 1768, 1848-2000
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FECHTER, n. Sc. form of Eng. fighter.
1. As in Eng., one who fights, a champion. Phr. a bonnie fechter, a bonny fighter, an intrepid fighter, often applied to a zealot, a disputatious person. The phr. seems to have originated in the Stevenson quot. below.Lth. 1768 W. Wilkie Fables 120:
A Hare's nae fechter ye maun mind.Ayr. 1848 J. Ramsay Woodnotes 46:
Newmilns' dog-fechters hae come down.Sc. 1886 Stevenson Kidnapped x.:
"O, man," he cried in a kind of ecstasy, "am I no a bonny fighter?"Kcb. 1894 Crockett Raiders xvii.:
Ye are a braw lad an' a bonny bit fechter, but ye want the judgment.Dmf. 1912 J. L. Waugh Robbie Doo 43:
He was a left-haunded fechter.Bnff. 1917 E. S. Rae Pte. J. M'Pherson 1:
He wis famous as a fechter Fin the skweel wan oot at nicht.Sc. 1946 Scots Mag. (May) 137:
Sir James Douglas — man, he's a bonny fechter. He is to take the King's heart to the Holy Land.Sc. 1976 Roderick Watson True History on the Walls 23:
Whaur are aa the skeelie singers
That I drank wi in my time,
Drouthie talkers, bonnie fechters,
Sae free wi love an breid an wine? m.Sc. 1986 Colin Mackay The Song of the Forest 46:
"Will you just look at us now. Aye, what a row of bonny fighters! Fight, is it? ... " wm.Sc. 1991 Liz Lochhead Bagpipe Muzak 43:
They called her a 'bonny fechter'. I know it off by heart because everybody's been stuffing that blinking cutting down my throat till I'm fed up looking at it ... m.Sc. 1992 Scotsman 22 Sep 12:
Janey Buchan, the retiring Labour MEP for Glasgow, is nothing if not a bonny fechter. Grown men have been reduced to tears under her lacerating wit and barbed humour. Abd. 2000 Herald 23 Oct 20:
It sounds like she's one of those bonnie fechters who have battered down the doors of male priviledge.
2. In pl.: the flower stems of the ribgrass, Plantago lanceolata, struck against one another by children in a contest to knock the flower-heads off (sw.Sc. 1896 Garden Wk. No. cxiv. iii.; Ags. 1950). Cf. Eng. dial. fighting-cocks, id., and Fechtie.
