Monday, March 28, 2011

Within Scotland I may be confused...

... but outwith Scotland I'm not.

I was a little surprised to stumble across the word "outwith" on my recent sojourn north of the border. Turns out it means without, but the ingenious celts decided to distinguish the "without" that means lacking something from the "without" which means outside or external to. How very helpful of them.
Perhaps they can next set their mind to disambiguating fluke: keflu, ukefl, lukefm ?????

Courtesy bidfors me from telling them to offf**k with our language.