Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) defines smool as: “To slink, sneak, go about furtively “ or “To behave obsequiously, to curry favour, to fawn, wheedle, ingratiate oneself, especially in the phrase ‘to smule in wi’, to cajole (a person), to ‘suck up to’”.
In William Souter’s The Tryst (Poems in Scots, 1935), the woman smools away:
“It was about the waukrife hour
When cocks begin to craw
That she smool’d saftly thru the mirk
Afore the day wud daw.
Sae luely, luely, cam she in
Saie luely was she gaen;
And wi’ her a’ my simmer days
Like they had never been.”
An early example of the ingratiating sense comes from Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine of August 1851: “Smollying [sic] wi’ silly women till they get them to marry them”.
The term survives, though not necessarily meaning sneakiness: “A few weeks ago, while having a wee smool around the BBC’s New Broadcasting House in London, I happened to bump in to Carol Kirkwood, she of morning weather maps and forecasts...” (The Herald, 2018).
Also in 2018, Alistair Heather used it thus: “These braw stane biggins are abandoned, an will smool slaw back intae the earth, an be forgot.” (Herald)
But some things don’t change… From Anne Donovan’s Matilda in Scots (2019): “He said if onythin bad ever happened in the schuil, it wis sure tae be his dochter wha done it. Ah’ve no met the wee smool yet, but she’ll ken aw aboot it when ah dae. Her faither said she’s a richt wee plook.”
Scots Word of the Week comes from Dictionaries of the Scots Language. Visit DSL Online at https://dsl.ac.uk.
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