Gawpus
November 15th 2025
The Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) didn’t pull any punches in its 1956 definition of this term: “A fool, a stupid clumsy lout, an open-mouthed vacant-minded person, especially one given to talking much and foolishly”.
The term is derived from gaup, to gape or stare open-mouthed, which may explain the additional meaning, “A big-mouthed person; hence, the mouth itself”. Only a single example is given, from Aberdeen in 1925: “Apen yer gapus or I see yer teeth”.
An early example comes from 1826 in Noctes Ambrosianae, a series of dialogues published in Blackwood’s Magazine: “About Political Economy . . . I hae observed ae thing . . . that the greatest gawpuses are aye speakin about it”.
In July 1875, the term appeared in The John o’ Groat Journal within a disagreement over migration from Caithness between editors: “But this wonderful editor, who maintains that he is no ‘gaapus,’ again joins issue in our favour and against himself, by saying that ‘our births exceed our deaths by 600 a year’”.
Moving on to the twentieth century, Lewis Grassic Gibbon provides an unflattering description of a burial in Grey Granite (1934): “The gawpus blethered a lot of stite [nonsense] afore they shovelled him in the earth”.
In 1952, the Orcadian author R. T. Johnston observed in Stenwick Days that, “The men in Stenwick is aafil faird for makkin’ gappuses o’ thirsels, an’ crooners is no thowt muckle o’ here onywey’”.
Currently, the last example in DSL comes from an Aberdonian correspondent in 1993: “He’s jis a richt gaapus”.
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
