Boak
To retch or vomit. Or, in milder use, to express disgust: 'that's gives me the boak' = that makes me feel sick (figuratively or literally). Used as verb or noun ('the boak').
Etymology
From Scots 'bowk' meaning to retch, attested in Older Scots and preserved across Ulster Scots and Scots speech. Likely imitative - the 'bok' sound mimics the physical act. The standard English 'puke' is a parallel imitative formation; the Scots and Ulster Scots form developed independently.
In a sentence
"The smell off that bin would give you the boak."
Historical notes
Boak handles both the literal and the figurative senses of disgust in one short word. 'I'm going to boak' is bodily; 'that gives me the boak' is rhetorical. The Ulster Scots use is freely interchangeable with 'boke' (the same word with a different spelling). Younger Ulster speech sometimes prefers 'boke' in writing; older speech and DSL prefer 'boak'.
Alternate spellings
boke
Sources
- Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), entry BOWK v. · dictionary
- Macafee, Caroline. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996. · dictionary