Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Don't fash yourself

Last week, as I was racing to finish a guest post summarizing my "journey into fiction writing" for author Donis Casey's Tell Me Your Story corner, I crashed with a migraine. Later, when I crawled out and did a little whimpering to Donis, she very kindly replied, "As my grandma used to say, don't fash yourself."

Don't fash yourself... now there's a Slang-o-rama expression if ever I heard one!

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According to The Scotsman, I probably should write that phrase out as dinna fash yoursel, because, yes, it's a Scottish expression. The article explains that fash generally has two meanings: the first being not to get annoyed by a situation, and the other being not to inconvenience yourself with something or someone. As for origin? Here's what The Scotsman says:

Uses of the word in Scots have been recorded as early as the sixteenth century, and appears to be derived from the medieval French verb ‘fascher.’  

For those who don't know French (I didn't), Wordsense offers up that fascher means to anger; to enrage, and is descended from the French fâcher, which means to annoy, to vex or to get angry, fall out. Wordsense adds that fâcher is "probably from Vulgar Latin *fasticāre, from an alteration of Late Latin fastidiāre < Classical Latin fastīdīre, present active infinitive of fastīdiō."

From (Vulgar) Latin, to (Medieval) French to (early modern) Scots... How'd that happen? Linguablog has thoughts on this, and also delves into dinna as well as fash.

And if this is  all going down the rabbit hole a little too far for you... well, don't fash yourself, because I'm done! :-)

Could this be a "fash-in" show pose?
 Scottish Kilt Shop, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons