HING has a distinct history in Scots and is not quite as closely related to the word hang as one might assume.

While the meanings of both words overlap, specifically Scots senses have developed which have no English counterpart. One use of hing as a noun is described by John Burrowes in his 1991 novel, Mother Glasgow, where a woman opened a window, "put a pillowcase across the sill, folded her arms on it and leaned out for a 'hing', which everyone in the old Glasgow knewwas the only way to watch the world go by".

Scots (and northern English) hing was borrowed from the Old Norse verb hengja. The word hang has a rather convoluted history involving two Old English verbs, hon and hangian, and anotherOld Norse verb hanga, all with senses relating to hanging and suspending. Old Norse and Old English are closely related and share a common ancestor and similar pairs or groups of words are often found in both languages.

Hing first appears in an instruction to "hing all the prisoneris" in John Barbour's late-fourteenthcentury tale of Robert the Bruce.

Gavin Douglas writes of "a puyr sawle, thus hyngand in ballance" in the sixteenth century and, in the seventeenth century, William Lithgow uses the line: "Howe woefull-like I hing my mourning face, And downewarde looke upon the sable ground."

Later, other distinctive usages developed, including the use of hinging or hingie to mean having bad health. In 1872, the Banffshire writer, WM Philip, wrote of someone "gyaun aboot noo hingin' an' hostin' and dwinin' awa". Bringing us closer to the present time, Michael Munro's The Patter (1985) notes that in Glasgow, appearing out-of-sorts may well provoke the response: "What's up wi ye? Ye're lookin kinna hingy this weather."

Scottish Word of the Week is written by Maggie Scott, of Scottish Language Dictionaries, www. scotsdictionaries. org. uk;

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mail@scotsdictionaries. org. uk.

Visit www. dsl. ac. uk to consult the 22-volume online Dictionary of the Scots Language.