Word of the Day!

shieling [shee-ling]

noun:
1 pasture land for the grazing of cattle in summer
2 a rough, sometimes temporary, hut or shelter used by people tending cattle on high or remote ground

        
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Time at the shieling would allow cattle to feed on rich summer pastures while keeping the animals away from crops growing down in the straths. (The ancient Highland shielings inspiring 21st Century living, The Scotsman, August 2018)

Already the little shieling among the crags began to show traces of the brighter days which were dawning. (Janet Milne Rae, Morag)

I was obliged to lodge in what they call a shieling, where I was used with great hospitality and uncommon politeness by a young farmer and his sister, who were then residing there, attending the milking of the ewes. (Alex Carlyle, Autobiography)

It was a moonlight night, and Montrose, worn out by the fatigues of the day, was laid down to sleep in a miserable shieling. (Sir Walter Scott, A Legend of Montrose)

Origin:

Mid 16th century from Scots shiel 'hut' (of unknown origin) + -ing. (Lexico)

argle-bargle [ahr-guhl-bahr-guhl]
noun or verb:
1 Copious but meaningless talk or writing; waffle
2 another word for argy-bargy (informal British); noisy quarrelling or wrangling

Examples:

My hint--if such you could call it--fell upon deaf ears; and he, seeming not to hear it, continued to argle-bargle, but betraying himself in every word he said. (Max Pemberton, Jewel Mysteries)

So starting in my first year of law school, I dutifully siphoned the extraneous, enjoyable stuff off the top of my head, leaving only room for a list of case names and pentasyllabic argle-bargle. (Brian Cubin, It’s Time For Lawyers To Smell The Roses, Above The Law, August 2020)

"Lookee, measters," said the man with the lantern, "'twun't do no good to argle-bargle about it. If Miss Eve be run away it be for we to run arter 'er, I rackon, or else go back t' bed." (John Jeffery Farnol, The Quest of Youth )

Origin:

1580s 'to argue obstinately, wrangle,' 'prob. a popular perversion of argue, or confusion of that word with haggle' [OED]. Reduplicated form argle-bargle is from 1822 (sometimes argy-bargy, 1857); As a noun, 'wrangling' from 1861.(Online Etymology Dictionary)

Argy-bargy was a late nineteenth-century modification of a Scots phrase, which appeared early in the same century in the form argle-bargle. The first part of this older version was a modification of argue. The second parts of the two forms, bargle and bargy, never had any independent existence — they are no more than nonsense rhyming repetitions of the first elements. (World Wide Words)

collieshangie [kol-ee-shang-ee ]
noun:
(Archaic Scottish)
1 a noisy quarrel; a confused uproar.
2 a dogfight
3 Talk, consultation, animated or gossiping conversation, with no idea of conflict implied

Examples:

"What like's all this collieshangie?" said he. I had never heard of a collieshangie in my days, but with the racket all about us in the city, I could have no doubt as to the man's meaning. (Robert Louis Stevenson, St Ives)

Sitting too long by the Barrel, MacBane and Donald Dow did quarrel, And in a colleshangee landed. (William Meston, Old Mother Grimm's Tales)

Queen Victoria wrote in her diary on Wednesday 6 September 1869: "At five minutes to eleven rode off with Beatrice, good Sharp going with us and having occasional 'collie-shangies' (a Scotch word for quarrels or rows) with collies when we came near cottages." (Portrait of Queen Victoria's favourite dog in auction, BBC Berkshire, 2011)

Origin:

Origin uncertain; not in O.Sc. Gael. coileid, noise, hubbub, stir, has been suggested as the first element; the suggestion that it comes from Collie, a dog, + , a piece of wood or other encumbrance attached to a dog's tail (thereby causing it to make a noisy disturbance), is doubtful on the grounds that the earliest known use of the word = a disturbance, quarrel between two men. (Dictionary of the Scots Language)

One of the most vivid terms for such occasions is a Scots term that is, sadly, rarely used. Collieshangie is thought to be a compound of the Collie dog breed and shangie, a term for an object tied to a dog's tail. When shangies were tied to a Collie's tail, it is said to have made them irritable. It has also been said that 'collie' could derive from coileid, a Gaelic word meaning a noise or disturbance. Collieshangie's precise origin and definition is diffuse - it can mean anything from a minor disagreement to a physical brawl, but in phonetic terms it does not instinctively suggest violence. ('Scottish word of the week', The Scotsman)

Mid 18th century of unknown origin (Lexico)