Gushet house
March 29th 2025
A gushet house is defined as “a house standing at a corner and forming an angle between two roads”.
An early example comes from Alex Wallace’s Sketches of Life and Character (1869): “All our readers doubtless know what a ‘gusset-house’ means — the end or front house in a line of buildings that is pushed forward into another street or thoroughfare, dividing it into two”.
Moving further north, John Fraser’s Reminiscences of Inverness (1905) gives us the following: “That gushet-house at the corner of Wells Street and Muirtown Street is the Steamboat Inn”.
Research here at DSL has also revealed earlier instances of the term, as in this advertisement from the Glasgow Herald of June 1846: “Wanted, a lad, about 16 years of age, as an Apprentice to a Grocer. One from the Country will be preferred. Apply to C. Blair, Gushet House, Anderston”. Perhaps lads from the country were cheaper.
Moving on to the twenty-first century, in December 2015 the Airdrie and Coatbridge Advertiser announced the winner of their short story competition: “Finally, in our adult section we decided to choose an outright winner and that was Airdrie’s Tony Beekman for his other-worldly tale The Gushet House”.
In February of the previous year, the same newspaper published local planning permission given for “replacement UPVC double-glazed windows at 2 Gushet House, 153A Aitchison Street, Airdrie”. Could this have prompted the winning short story?
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
