HANDS up all those who haven’t heard of hygge? Ten years ago, I’d have looked out at a sea of blank faces.

Today, while I still look out at a sea of blank faces, everyone has a hand up, apart from that gentleman at the back who is asleep already.

Do I need to define my terms like some dull academic?

Oh, very well. Asleep: it’s a state of unconsciousness which lasts three hours a night before you wake up tormented by demons.

Oh, hygge? Come on, you ken fine what that is. It’s that Danish thing that they keep telling us can’t be translated into English but means cosy.

It’s to do with candlelight, warmth and friends or, failing the latter, a bottle with 40 per cent proof contents. Suspicion has grown that the Scandinavians are having a laugh with this, and that it means nothing to them.

The Brits and Yanks, they think, have bought a hygge in a poke with this made-up hype.

Doubts first arose when it emerged that no one knew how to pronounce hygge, least of all the Danes.

Every book or website gives a different pronunciation, opening up opportunities for niche humans to do what they do best: show that they know better.

Thus hygge, pronounced variously by competitive authorities in the field as hoogah, huegya, and hooguh.

Here’s a wee tip, not just for foreign persons but those who speak our own language: say it like you spell it, or change the spelling.

Hygge should be pronounced hie-geh if that’s how they’re going to spell it. Or it could be higgie but, by my argument, you’d be better spelling it like that. I’m tying myself in knots here.

At any rate, higgie sounds cosier than hoogah, which conjures up some fearful monster that emerges from the swamp to eat sheep and postmen.

All the same, hygge has done wonders for the perception that Scandinavians know a thing or two and, apart from being abrupt and unfriendly, are people from whom we could learn something.

In Scotland, where folk are loquacious and friendly (until the inevitable head-butting), a move is afoot to copy this hygge palaver with a contrived concept of our own: cosagach.

When I tell you that the cunning figures behind this flimflam are our tourist authorities, then I cannot blame you for leaping back in horror like Basil Fawlty.

Tourism promoters give used-car salesmen and estate agents a run for their money when it comes to hyperbole, even if they’ve some way to go before catching up with journalists.

In a controversial statement, tourism bosses slicked their hair and claimed: “When the storms rage, there is nothing more satisfying than being curled up in front of the fire, hot toddy in hand, listening to the weather.”

Well, that’s true if you don’t have a television and a bag of Revels. They’re on to something with the storms, though.

New slogan: “Come to Scotland: it’s ragin’.”

It has long been my view that the tourist industry has conspicuously failed to promote the misery and despair of a Scottish winter.

No dry, crisp Scandinavian snow here; just slush, rain and damp winds that chill the soul and sour the character.

And the whole point is to insulate yourself indoors against that with what they’re calling còsagach.

You could alternatively join the natives in sitting outside with a bottle of Buckfast in your blue hands and a hot water bottle beneath your baseball cap.

Many readers will have intuited that còsagach is Gaelic.

The Herald, normally a responsible newspaper, reported mischievously that, as well as meaning “snug, sheltered or cosy”, còsagach can also mean “full of crevices”.

I don’t think that’d be a problem when it came to marketing.

Come to Scotland. It’s full of crevices.

And they’re currently enjoying a revival under Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative party leader.

Of course, never mind ruddy hygge; trying to pronounce còsagach is going to cause some people to gag on their cavities.

No one is a bigger defender of Gaelic than the present writer, who believes it should be compulsory – for Unionists.

But you have to say it doesn’t make things easy for itself.

Why use bh, for example when v – which is how it’s pronounced – is available? It really is a load of nonsense.

It’s the main reason why people don’t learn Gaelic. It makes it bhery difficult.

To be fair, còsagoch doesn’t look too hard, and Bord na Gaidhlig said it could be spelled phonetically “coze-a-goch”.

I trust this is how it will be officially written from now on.

In the meantime, we await hordes of tourists coming here to rest their weary crevices on warm seats by the fire.

Yes, as it pishes doon ootside and a raging gale howls a warning of doom.