Editors of the
Dictionaries of the Scots Language are kindly supplying us with a Scots word of the month. This month, the word is:
GLISK
a glimpse, glance
The fleetingness of a glimpse is captured in this word. So, when Robert Wodrow writes in a letter (1720): 'I have only got time to glisk it over cursorily', we know exactly what he means.
Instant attraction is described by Neil Munro in
Doom Castle (1901): 'She had a notion o' the Frenchman frae the first glisk o' him'. Sometimes a glisk is all that a rapid motion permits, as we read in Scott's
Waverley (1814): 'They just got a glisk o' his honour as he gaed into the wood, and banged aff a gun at him'.
Even a glisk is enough to identify the crowlin ferlie in SR Crockett's
The Raiders (1894): 'She... had gotten a glisk of the grey thing that louped from Mistress Allison's petticoat'.
Passing resemblances may be glisked. Gilbert Rae tells us in
The Howe o' Braefoot (1951): 'In a singin' bird ye can glisk a likeness to the glory that fills a' heaven'.
The Dictionaries of the Scots Language surmise that glisk is probably of the same origin as Norwegian form 'glisa', meaning to gleam, flash or glisten, corresponding to Old English 'glisian' to glitter. These senses are apparent in a quotation from
Blackwood's Magazine (1820): 'The flocks thickly scattered over the heath, arose, ... and turned to the ruddying east glisk of returning light'. Hence the adjective 'glisky' is used of sunny moments between dull periods.
AD Willock uses it figuratively in
Rosetty Ends (1887): 'It wasna till a meenit or twa afore the end cam' that a glisk o' reason cam' back'.
We also find it in the sense of 'just a touch' when someone catches 'a glisk o the cauld', or in the sense of a short time in George Stewart's
Shetland Fireside Tales (1877): 'If ye wid just bide a glisk whaur ye ir, I wid rin hame for a sark o' my midder's'.
Scots Word of the Month is written by editors of the Dictionaries of the Scots Language. You can sponsor a word from this national archive as a special gift for a loved one or friend. More information about word sponsorship can be found here.
