The idea of this wee wifie and her plans for a night of hanky-panky had my bathing biddies plying me with stories of passionate pensioners.
|
|
I was writing up the cashbook when the phone rang and a very nice wifie said that a competition my husband entered had won him pounds 1000 of vouchers.
|
|
Advertised in 1902 reprint of Charlotte M. Yonge's Countess Kate + The Stokesley Secret. The titles: Nellie's Memories, Wee Wifie, Barbara Heathcote's Trial, Robert Orde's Atonement, Wooed and Married, Heriot's Choice, Queenie's Whim, Mary St. John, Not Like Other Girls, For Lilias, Uncle Max, Only the Governess, Lover or Friend?, Basil Lyndhurst, Sir Godfrey's Grand-daughters, The Old Old Story, Mistress of Brae Farm, Mrs. Romney + But Men Must Work.
|
|
Diminutives in -ie, burnie small burn (stream), feardie/feartie (frightened person, coward), gamie (gamekeeper), kiltie (kilted soldier), postie (postman), wifie (woman, also used in Geordie dialect), rhodie (rhododendron), and also in -ock, bittock (little bit), playock (toy, plaything), sourock (sorrel) and Northern –ag, bairnag (little), bairn (child, common in Geordie dialect), Cheordag (Geordie), -ockie, hooseockie (small house), wifeockie (little woman), both influenced by the Scottish Gaelic diminutive -ag (-óg in Irish Gaelic).
|
|
The possessive is formed by adding 's or by using an appropriate pronoun The wifie that's hoose gat burnt (the woman whose house was burnt), the wumman that her dochter gat mairit (the woman whose daughter got married); the men that thair boat wis tint (the men whose boat was lost). A third adjective/adverb yon/yonder, thon/thonder indicating something at some distance D'ye see yon/thon hoose ower yonder/thonder? Also thae (those) and thir (these), the plurals of that and this respectively. In Northern Scots this and that are also used where "these" and "those" would be in Standard English.
|
|