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Learning in Literature

swither v. be uncertain about what to do or choose, doubt, hesitate, dither

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“swither v. be uncertain about what to do or choose, doubt, hesitate, dither”

30th July 2007

Swither is something of a stealth Scots word. Many Scottish people use it without any notion of its Scottishness, and along with words like 'outwith' and 'pinkie', and phrases such as 'where I stay' ('where I live', to those south of the Border) it has been fully assimilated into Scottish Standard English. It seems that once a word is acceptable in any formal context, we tend not to look too closely at its nationality, but closer inspection can tell us more about our own language and culture.
Swither, recorded in early use as swidder, has been found in Scots texts from the sixteenth century onwards. In The Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland (1535), William Stewart describes bugle-blasts that "causit mony for to sueit (sweat) and swidder" and Robert Sempill's Satirical Poems of the Time of the Reformation (1570) cautions: "Lat na mans feid (hostility), throw feirfull dreid, your hartis mak to swidder". The word's origins are unclear, although connection with an Old English verb of similar form has been suggested. Swithering can also indicate some sort of fluctuation of fitful movement, as in the following quotation from Elliot Cowan Smith's Border's tale, Mang Howes and Knowes (1925): "A pickle blewe reek threh the hoose-lums o Denum draigglet in a swutherin clud".
Returning to the more recent past, The Official Report of the Scottish Parliament (2000) includes Winnie Ewing's account of events when she uttered the word in the House of Commons: "The members all stopped and said, 'I don't understand'. I wondered what the English word for 'swither' was, and they shouted, 'prevaricate' and 'hesitate'. Neither of those words is exactly the same as 'swither' ... the word is untranslatable into English except by the phrase 'hesitating between two courses of action'. That illustrates part of the strange experience of speaking Scots."