THE BIG "G" with Gael Woods

10:44 am on 31 July 2014

Instructions to spectators at the Hampden Park athletics stadium in Glasgow are either to "Gie it laldie", or to "Hod your wheest".

In Glaswegian "weegie" parlance that's the order to make some noise or, conversely, to keep quiet, the latter regularly employed at the setting of races when quiet is required.

Encouragement for athletes is expressed as "goun yourself".

And then there's the totally unabashed re-naming of the stadium Mexican Wave. In Glasgow, it's the Weegie Wave.

Weegie words on display in Glasgow.

Weegie words on display in Glasgow. Photo: RNZ / Gael Woods

Weegie words themselves are getting a good run at the Commonwealth Games.

At the velodrome, a large whiteboard at the entrance spells out the weegie word of the day.

Some uncharacteristically hot temperatures at the beginning of the sports festival provided an ideal opportunity to promote special weather vocabulary, or more to the point, "weegie weather".

For example:

Scorchio - really hot

Braw - very pleasant

Taps aff - brilliantly fine, warm enough to necessitate the removal of T-shirts - or "taps". Not always a braw sight.

At the other end of the spectrum:

Dreicht - horrible. A common Glasgow phrase: "I'm scuddered with this dreicht weather."

"Baufin" describes something unpleasant, such as some food items, although not necessarily the infamous deep fried Mars bar, and absolutely not the national drink, Irn Bru - "bru'd in Scotland to a secret recipe for over 100 years", and a bigger seller than that global monolith, Coco-Cola, according to the locals.

Research, however, has failed to discover whether "baufin" could be applied to weather. Perhaps best to stick to "dreicht".

The be-coned Duke of Wellington.

The be-coned Duke of Wellington. Photo: RNZ / Gael Woods

Some other useful weegie words include "doing a burlie", meaning to do a u-turn, which my weegie lexicon advisor (excellent informative older woman at a bus-stop) informed me comes from a Scottish dancing step, a burrell. How charmingly braw.

Another word, "shoggen" is definitely better demonstrated (a sort of body shake) than explained.

Having their own special lingo appears to be a feature of the Glaswegian character that delights in its own brand of irreverent humour.

How else, for instance, to explain the locals' long-standing tradition of placing a traffic cone on the head of a statue of the Duke of Wellington outside the city's Gallery of Modern Art.

It seems that before the Games there was at attempt by city grandees to put an end to this unusual traffic cone placements. The attempt failed. No sooner had the cone been removed, than it was immediately replaced.

There's also Glasgow's well-publicised rivalry with Edinburgh. The saying goes, in Glasgow anyway, that Edinburgh has a castle but Glasgow has a heart.

But for all that, Weegies don't really seem to take themselves too seriously, summed up perhaps by the ubiquitous, "Ach, it's nae bother".

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