Suffice to say that if someone calls you a tumfie, they don’t mean to flatter… Dictionaries of the Scots Language defines tumfie as, among other things, a “dull, stupid, lumpish person, a dolt …”.

The word has a long pedigree. Our first citation is from 1788 in Robert Galloway’s Poems: “Beware of yonder corner-house, Some ca’ it tumpie’s fauld”. It’s followed by this from John Galt in The Entail; or the Lairds of Grippy (1822): “That unreverent and misleart tumphy your wife”.

In the McFlannel Family (1950) Helen W Pryde uses it in the sense of a spoilt child: “‘Shout for Mother,’ ordered Peter, and the suggestion called forth the remark from Ivy in the hedge: ‘Huh - Mammy’s tumphy!’”.

And, in Anna Blair’s Rowan on the Ridge (1980), a frustrated father chivvies his son: “He stood over the girning boy. ‘Get up oot o’ there. You’re nothing but a great tumphie, I’ll gie you jist time to get up, put on your breeks and be ready to come wi’ me for a day’s work at the mill. ...’”

Tumfie is just one of a litany of Scots words for general abuse, and here’s an ample demonstration by Anne Donovan in a 2016 article for the National: “Tae see the castle, ya numptie. Or should ah say – ya bumph, ya dobbie, ya dochle, ya dowfie ya dulbert, ya dovie, ya fozie, ya gaibie, ya glundie, ya gomerel, ya gowk, ya oanshach, ya snoddie, ya souk, ya sowf, ya stookie, ya sumph, ya tumfie, ya yaup”.

Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.