Sheugh
A narrow open drain or ditch, especially a wet one running between fields. Both noun and verb. Comes laden with rural specificity: the rough working trench at the edge of a meadow, dug by hand or by plough.
Etymology
Recorded in Older Scots from 1501 (as 'sewch') and through 'souch' (1570) and 'shouch' (1665), with the modern 'sheuch' / 'sheugh' settling later. Traced ultimately to Early Middle English 'sogh', though the deeper origin is uncertain - one theory ties it to a Brabant dialect 'zoeg' meaning meadow ditch. The word travelled into Ulster Scots through the seventeenth-century plantation and stayed put while standard English moved to 'ditch' or 'drain' for the same feature.
In a sentence
As for the trench, where I come from that's a sheugh. - Frank McNally, The Irish Times, 2013
as lazy as sheugh watter - James Fenton, The Hamely Tongue
The middle o the road's no a sheugh. - James Fenton, The Hamely Tongue (Aughtercloney)
Historical notes
Sheugh has a second life as the jocular name for the North Channel between Scotland and Ireland - 'across the sheugh' meaning across the water. The figure of speech turns the narrowest point of a working ditch into the narrowest point of a sea, and is used on both shores. The word has held its ground in Ulster Scots speech longer than in many parts of Scotland, where it survives mostly in older idiom.
Sources
- Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), entry SHEUCH n., v. · dictionary
- Fenton, James. The Hamely Tongue: A Personal Record of Ulster-Scots in County Antrim. Ullans Press. · dictionary
- McNally, Frank. "When Anglophone lines get crossed." The Irish Times, 31 October 2013. · other