Scottish National Dictionary (1700–)
Hide Quotations Hide Etymology
About this entry:
First published 1971 (SND Vol. VIII).
This entry has not been updated since then but may contain minor corrections and revisions.
Quotation dates: 1706, 1762-1945
[1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0]
SCOURGE, n., v. Also scurge, skirge, and metathetic form skrudge. Sc. usages:
I. n. 1. The whip or lash for a boy's spinning-top (Lnk. 1969). Also in Eng. dial.Gsw. 1877 A. G. Murdoch Laird's Lykewake 171:
A big spinning “tap” wi' a whuppin' skrudge ca'd.Gsw. 1931 H. S. Robertson Curdies 86:
A top, I may explain, was distinguished from a peerie by being flogged into spinning life, the instrument used being a “scurge”.Dmb. 1945 Folklore LVI. 369:
Whips were not used, but a length of stout rope, frayed at one end to form a kind of brush, which swept, rather than lashed, the top along. This was known, it seems significantly, as the scourge.
2. A termagant, a brawling, domineering woman (wm.Sc. 1868 Laird of Logan App. 517; Wgt., Kcb. 1969).
II. v. 1. To exhaust the fertility (of land) by overcropping, neglect of rotation, lack of manure, etc., of the farmer or the crop (Sc. 1808 Jam.). Ppl.adjs. scourged; scourging, of a crop which does this. Comb. scourge-crop.Slg. 1762 Session Papers, Stirling v. Christie (21 July) 6:
He has known severals, the last Year of their Tack, to sow Oats, where they used to sow Bear, or Pease and Beans, which is called the taking a scourged Cropt, which is an impoverishing of the Ground.Sc. 1773 Sc. Farmer I. 21:
They may prevent his hurting the Farm, by a course of what they call scourging cropts, near the end of his lease.Mry. 1795 Stat. Acc.1 VIII. 255:
The last [rye] has, of late years, been in no high estimation, from the effect it has in scourging the ground.Sc. 1842 J. Aiton Clerical Econ. 37, 154:
He will find it to be his interest to scourge everything out of the land. . . . When a minister's incumbency is apparently drawing to a close, one scourge crop after another is sometimes taken from a glebe. . . . Let that rule be — no scourging.Sc. 1888 J. Harrison Scot in Uls. 111:
Flax is a crop which scourges the ground.
2. ? To be noisy and obstreperous, to brawl, break the peace. Cf. I. 2. Ppl.adj. skirgin, brawling, rowdy.Gall. 1706 Session Bk. Penninghame (1933) I. 173:
Agnes M'Dowall did abuse her three severall dayes the last week and said that she was a skirging, lying lown and bitch.
