Open Dictionary word of the week: shoogle

shoogle (verb)

a Scots word meaning to shake

Just shoogle it about a bit and it’ll come loose.

(Submitted from the United Kingdom)

There were a lot of new words added to the Open Dictionary over the last week. Here’s a list:

completist, nominative determinism, Libor, net neutrality, GLT, telephone number salary, run out of road, Higgs boson, lowball, green on blue, lowballing – and looking at this list, if you’re in the UK and semi-conscious at minimum, there’s definitely a summarized news-story of the last week in there. A free dictionary in the post to anyone who’ll tell it …

As for me, I’m just going to go for shoogle. Because there’s something about Scots that draws me in. I mean, say it out loud: shoogle. You can’t help but say it in a swishy whisper and smile a bit. Give something a shoogle. So much better than giving it a little shake.  We ran a campaign two years ago now that travelled the world looking at how English is spoken in different countries. And Scottish-English month was one of my favourites. (By Scottish-English I mean to say the type of English that is spoken in Scotland when the Scots speak English, I don’t mean to imply that Scots is a type of English … I was lectured on this point by a Scotsman … at least I think that’s what he said, all I heard was music.)

Anyway, I think English could do with a whole lot more Scots in it. Though, another thing (generalization) I learned during Scottish-English month was that it’s the Edinburgh accent that brings the music and the ‘Weegie’ accent that brings the humour. But I won’t insist on that because I don’t know, that was one blogger’s patter. Also, Vikki Reilly wrote a blog post which mentioned shoogle during that month and I liked her description of it:

Shoogle, in Scots, shake, in Standard English. And yet, shoogle is a more specific kind of shake: it’s the gentle shake you give your presents under the tree, or of a key in a difficult lock. It’s a less violent action, although it definitely doesn’t cut it as a rock ’n roll number … shoogle yer tail feather, anyone?

If you do pop over to the Open Dictionary recent entries, you’ll see that another Scots word came up last week: jamp – past tense for jump. See, I think that’s good too.