View site in Scots

Scots Language Centre Centre for the Scots Leid

FLYPE v to fold back or turn inside out

As shown in The Dictionary of the Scots Language (www.dsl.ac.uk), flype was often used of clothing. For example, socks can be flyped, meaning folded inside out in pairs.  Examples of this appear in this 1904 quote from Erchie, My Droll Friend by Hugh Foulis (Neil Munro): “Efter this Erchie MacPherson’s gaun to flype his ain socks”, and this from Liz Lochhead’s Dreaming Frankenstein (1984): “So she turned his riddles inside out easily like someone flyping pairs of socks”.  We also find “He flypit his pooches but a’ he cou’d fin’ Was a spunk [match] wi’ the head broken aff” from John C Milne’s The Orra Loon (1946).

An earlier example is the somewhat gruesome “I used often to flype up the lids of my eyes” from John Row’s History of the Kirk of Scotland (1650).  This usage also appears in the saying “I will sooner see you fleip-ey’d, like a French Cat”, which is described in James Kelly’s A complete Collection of Scottish Proverbs (1721) as ‘A disdainful rejecting of an unworthy Proposal; spoken by bold Maids to the vile offers of young Fellows’.

On a more gory note, flype can also refer to peeling of skin, as in this quote from Allan Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd (1725): “And ten sharp Nails, that when my Hands are in, Can flyp the Skin o’ ye’r Cheeks out o’er your Chin”.  A less violent example is given in James Angus’s A Glossary of the Shetland Dialect (1914): “I flipet da skin aff a mi finger”.

It is also more generally applied, as in “He couldna get his tongue to flype roond the words” from W D Latto’s Tammas Bodkin (1864). The origin of flype is obscure, but it is associated with Germanic and Scandinavian words which share the basic notion of curling downwards.

 

 

Scots Word of the Week is written by Ann Ferguson of Scottish Language Dictionaries