DON’T ever tell anyone in Singapore somewhere is “haaching”. I beg you. It’s to preserve Scotland’s reputation. The journey to this knowledge started one afternoon in Hong Kong, as I sought a coffee shop for an hour’s work before a meeting. The target, a café called Elephant Grounds, was incredibly busy. At this point, a friend in Singapore Whatsapped to inquire after my well-being and what-doing, so I conveyed my aspirations to caffeinate and crossly added but “Elephant Grounds is hoaching”.

Two messages came. “Hoaching?” “Explain’.”

Before I could, another message arrived. It was a screen grab of Google.com.sg’s top definition of “hoaching”. ‘Hoach. Verb. To be full of, or swarming with.

“The place is hoaching with wee girls in pink leotards and tutus.”

A fourth message. “I live to learn.”

I dove into linguistic crisis management. Type, type, type. “Hoaching just means it’s really busy. No implication as to age, gender and attire of contributors to hoaching status.”

I tried Google in Hong Kong. Good grief, it was the same. The top definition included pink leotards. Google.co.uk. Still!

Below, sense reigned in another definition from the Urban Dictionary which merely said “to teem with. To have a plentiful supply of. Scottish in origin.” When I clicked on that link, the example of the term was “the place is hoaching with midges”. This urban lexicographer knows his or her stuff, I thought, nodding. But that wouldn’t be the first, and therefore pre-eminent, definition that anyone would read. Hoaching, in the first leotard-linked definition, was described as being both Scottish and Northern English.

I dreaded searching for other Scottish terms, but felt I had to. Would “footer” be explained as ‘wee girls in pink leotards and tutus procrastinating?”

Relief. It was the bottom of a page, and something to do with HTML.

Fish supper? I typed it, fearing “meal eaten by the parents of wee girls, now unable to wear pink leotards because of consumption of the searched term”. Phew. Fish supper was “battered and deep fried chips, of English origin.” I bridled but it wasn’t the time to take up those cudgels.

What else could I check? Skoosh, I thought, as in “it’s easy”. No skoosh, but up came “scoosh, to squirt. Scottish in origin. They scooshed the room with air freshener.”

Hmmm. A better example of usage would surely have been “the Scottish hillwalkers scooshed themselves with midge spray.”

I sat back, on the wall outside Elephant Grounds. Google’s search results, I realised, were hoaching with incorrect allusions and the number wasn’t wee. Were the writers of these terms trying to stamp out Scottish expressions by making the definitions as embarrassing as they could to the nation?

Wasn’t there a Google Intangible Cultural Heritage that could keep things right?

And what of the SNP Government’s global SEO management? Did they know, online, there were issues of national reputation? They were hoaching.

Until mass editing, any mention of hoaching will associate Scotland with a new generation of “corps de ballet”, presumably about to perform Swan Loch. World, this example of hoaching is a hoax.