Word of the week

• Droukit past participle drenched, soaked.
• Wifie n. a woman.
• SLAP n. a gap in a wall etc.
• HAP v. to cover, to wrap up.

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Droukit past participle drenched, soaked.

“Droukit past participle drenched, soaked.”

24th November 2008

Droukit

The verb drouk, or drook, means to soak, but droukit carries more than just the sense of being wet through. There is often an associated inner misery. You can’t help feeling sympathy for “The jaded coal horses, scranky an’ lean...a’ droukit through wi’ the cauld raw sleet” described by J. Ballantine in The Miller of Deanhaugh (1844). The simile “as weet as a droukit rat” also speaks of bedraggled sogginess, and so it is a little surprising to encounter another simile used by J. G. Lockhart in Reginald Dalton (1823): “Ellen, when she came ashore, was as druckit as a water-wagtail”; nanny washtails (also known as a kirk sparrows or sittie fitties) are remarkably waterproof and never appear anything less than immaculate.
Drookit proves a useful word in a definition of glaur given by R. MacRailt in Hoolachan (1923): “Weel, just to mak’ it plainer to your understanding, glaur, whilk is identical wi’ glaupit clart, is just, as ony bairn wad ken, drookit stour”.
Having got fair droukit in a thunner plump, onding, blatter, skite or smirr –Scots is particularly rich in words for rain – there is nothing better than to be back indoors. The resultant bonhomie is captured in a quotation from the Herald (1992): “We ate this wondrous repast this evening after a drookety day out skip-raiding and it was a deeply bonding experience”. Returning home after a long shift underground in the wet, “Drookit miners at lowsin, whan hame fae the mine, Suin stripp't aff thir pee-wee's (miners’ singlets) ti a scrub in the bine (tub)”, as Davie Kerr recalls in A Puckle Poems (2000). Prompt action after a droukin as advisable, as Sir Walter Scott shows in The Antiquary (1816): “Marching in terribly drouket, an mony a sair hoast (cough) was amang them”. So take care.