Useful Scots word: glamour

By Betty Kirkpatrick

Bling: oh, the glamour. Picture: SieBot

Many of the televised reports on the recent Oscars ceremony were as much concerned with what the rich and famous were wearing as with the identity of the winners and the losers. There for us all to see was the fact that Hollywood is still synonymous with glamour. But what is this do with Scots? A great deal, because the word glamour has its origin in the Scots language.

Glamour in Scots meant enchantment, magic or witchcraft. It also meant a spell, especially one that affected the eyesight of the recipient of the spell, as in to cast the glamour ower the een. If this happened to you, your view of things became very different from the reality.

English has Sir Walter Scott to thank for its acquisition of the word glamour. Some of his work had quite a following in England and in a note to one of his narrative verses he explained Scots glamour in the sense of spell and how this spell was said to distort people’s image of things.

You can begin to see how we acquired the modern sense of glamour. Casting the glamour ower the een made people see things unrealistically. Acquiring modern glamour needs the help of cosmetics, designer labels and bling. So both senses of glamour have a deceptive quality.

There is something else unusual about glamour. Glamour was originally a modified form of the word grammar. Grammar originally meant learning in general, rather than its modern sense, and it also referred to a knowledge of the occult or magic. Thus, grammar and glamour were both caught up in witchcraft.

In time both glamour and grammar discarded their associations with the occult and went their separate ways. The former became the friend of celebs everywhere. The latter used to be an essential part of education.

Betty Kirkpatrick is the former editor of several classic reference books, including Chambers Twentieth Dictionary and Roget’s Thesaurus. She is also the author of several smaller language reference books, including The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés published by Bloomsbury, and a series of Scots titles, including Scottish Words and Phrases, Scottish Quotations, and Great Scots, published by Crombie Jardine.

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