Sunday Word: Howff

[sallymn]

howff [houf, ouf, hohf, ohf]

noun:
(Scottish, archaic) 1 an abode; a familiar shelter or refuge
2 A place of resort, a favourite haunt, a meeting place;

Examples:

It is a howff abundant in character but without renown and exists as a place for people to gather, wet their whistle, and have a blether. It is the perfect local. (Socialising in pubs 'boosts mens' mental health, The Scotsman, January 2014)

It has a romantic past, having been built in secret in 1952 by four climbers fed up with carrying the heavy tents of the day on the long walk into the Cairngorms. There's is a great tale of the building of this howff. (Who remembers this ? Howffs, Old mans thoughts and tales, July 2020)

Together they sought the shelter of a howff off the High Street. ( Janet Beith, The Corbies)

The brewster-wife at the howff near Loch Lomond mouth keeps a good glass of aqua. (Neil Munro, Doom Castle)

Yonder, overlooking Tibbie Shiel's 'cosy beild' - a howff of the Noctes coterie - stands the solitary white figure of the beloved Shepherd as Christopher North's prophetic soul felt that it must be some day. (W S Crockett, In the Border Country)

The office-bearers and Senatus of the University of Cramond - an educational institution in which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense - meet to do honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established howff, Cramond Bridge. (Robert Louis Stevenson, St Ives)

The Globe Tavern here, which for these many years has been my Howff. (J de L Ferguson (ed), The Letters of Robert Burns)


Origin:
The earliest known use of the noun howff is in the early 1700s. OED's earliest evidence for howff is from 1711, in the writing of Allan Ramsay, poet. (Oxford English Dictionary)

First recorded in 1555–65; origin uncertain (Dictionary.com)