PARTAN n a crab

 

Borrowed from Gaelic and recorded in Scots texts from the 15th century, the partan has got its claws well and truly into the Scots idiom. Early usages seems to mean any kind of crab but, later, partan usually denotes the edible crab. In the Foulis Account Book of 1700, we find that a luxurious dinner of "lapster and partans and brandie"

cost £2. 18. 6 but, less extravagantly, W Alexander in his 1871 novel Johnny Gibb writes of "bawbee partans". A halfpenny would have been all that a "partan-fisted" or miserly person would have willingly paid. The term partan-back was used in times past to refer to a soldier or redcoat, because of the colour of the cooked crab. A partan-taed person walks with in-turned toes. A partan-faced individual is not a pretty sight and if you really dislike someone you could call them "a partan-faced sculduddery loon" a colourful phrase from J. Carruthers’ A Man Beset (1927). Fu as a partan means full to the brim as in a vivid quotation from J. Stewart’s Sketches (1857):

"He had primed his proboscis [with snuff] till it was as ‘fou as a partin’", and it is easy imagine the "little man, as full as a partan of buttoned, brushed, and powdered pride" described by H. Farnie in Fife Coast (1860). Even when its insides are picked clean, the partan has its uses. Small children made partan-cairties, pulling the shells along on a string and the claw could be used as a pipe in which dried leaves of coltsfoot or ‘shellaggie’ (Latin: tussilago) was smoked as a substitute for tobacco. Gaining renewed popularity with gardeners is the partan-hoe, a cultivator with curved claw-like prongs. The Aberdeen Press and Journal of 21st April 1953 tells of the availability of "Round Shovels, Dung Graips; Dutch, Draw and Parton Hoes".

Scots Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries.

This week's Word is spoken by Dr Dauvit Horsbroch.