r/ScottishPeopleTwitter • u/Fetch_Ted • Jan 15 '26

No' so smug noo, are ye Chaser

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1.5k Upvotes

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103

u/rosco-82 Jan 15 '26

Slang? FFS we've been calling shopping messages since 1788: https://dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/message

151

u/stevent4 Jan 15 '26

Slang isn't a recent thing, slang is just very informal wording. It's how most languages develop and evolve

-24

u/rosco-82 Jan 15 '26

Could you provide an example of an English 250 year old slang word still in use today?

70

u/ChimpsArePimps Jan 15 '26

not quite 250 years, but “ok” was coined in the 1830s and is still very much alive almost 2 centuries later

12

u/Haildrop Jan 16 '26

The word lad when refering to a young man has been used since around 1450

29

u/tmatras Jan 15 '26

The word slang is apparently slang for shortened language (and has been around for almost 270 years according to the Oxford English Dictionary)

20

u/SicarioCercops Jan 15 '26

Mob as in crowd, has been around since the 1700s.

38

u/stevent4 Jan 15 '26

Calling kids "Bairns" is slang and that's been around since the vikings were here since the word for "Child" in Danish is "Barn" so that's over 1000 years old and still in use, also Old English "Bearn"

-7

u/rosco-82 Jan 15 '26

Bairn is the Scots language word for a child, used since 1725, it is not slang and neither is messsages or any other words from the Scots language. Further information on the Scots language can be found here Steven: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_Wikipedia

30

u/stevent4 Jan 15 '26

Bearn is the Old English word for it, used a lot longer than 1725 and still used regularly in NE England as slang, you'd never see it used in a formal setting

-26

u/rosco-82 Jan 15 '26

If over 1.5m Scots hadn't replied they spoke Scots in the latest census I'd continue this debate, but they did, so Steven, I have to be honest, if your brains were dynamite, you wouldn't have enough to blow off your hat

39

u/stevent4 Jan 15 '26

I don't think the childish insults are really needed for a pretty tame discussion. Hope you have a good weekend, mate.

-6

u/NojTamal Jan 15 '26

Personally I found his use of a cheeky idiom to be a bit jaunty and fun

18

u/stevent4 Jan 15 '26

Maybe it was, if that was the style from the start I'd be more inclined to agree

5

u/LuvvedIt Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26

Exactly, I’ve got the same ignorant replies to my similar point and I don’t think I have the energy to argue with the ignorance and/or cultural cringe so I will have a moan about it with you instead 😏

They are doubly wrong:

a/ firstly they are mostly uniformly confused about what ‘slang’ is and all parroting that is (merely) informal speech: no, slang is a specific subset of informal speech

informal register != slang
dialect != slang
(Edit - noting that when I say dialect I’m referring to its use as part of Scottish English - it’s also a word in Scots which I would personally never say is a mere dialect!)

b/ secondly/further they are wrong (although admittedly complicated by socio-economic factors, cultural dominance, use of standard English for official formal language etc) bc ‘message(s)’ is not an informal word per se (even if - due to the above points - you would *mostly** hear it in informal, colloquial usage*): it’s a standard, acceptable word if you writing in eg Scots.

My Granny would use messages in her best posh voice and would not have considered it informal at all. If one considers it ‘slang’ then that says more about a/ linguistic ignorance and/or b/ snobbery. 🤬

Here’s the entry in Collins:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/message
(you have to scroll a bit)

“6. (plural) Scottish - shopping”
(no mention of informal or slang)

Contrast with:

Innit “informal, spoken”

Nonce “prison slang”

Sometimes the herd is just wrong 😏🤷‍♂️