Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Tattie-bogle!

 Ohhhh here's a good word to add to your Halloween vocabulary (rubbing hands together in glee):

Tattie-bogle!

Any guesses as to what this Scottish word means?

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A tattie-bogle is a scarecrow. Since the word Scottish in origin, who/what better to turn to for the etymology than The Scotsman newspaper? This what they have to say about tattie-bogle:

The tattie part is easy enough to decipher. Potato* farming was widespread across Scotland, so much so that it was one of the country’s main sources of sustenance... Bogle refers to a spiritual being or the subject of a folk tale. The scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz is an obvious literary example, but it does not take a great leap of the imagination to see the link between scarecrows and spectral figures. Despite that, it would be hard to think in all seriousness that anything with a name as daft as a tattie-bogle would be frightening.

Merriam-Webster keeps it simple, defining tattie-bogle as "a scarecrow in a potato field." Awwww, I was hoping for something a little more in the spirit of Halloween, given that it's such a great word! Collins Dictionary obliges, with "a person or thing that appears frightening but is not actually harmful."

I looked around a bit more, and found that there's a Scottish dance called the tattie-bogle and any number of poems invoking these beings, such as The Singin' Tattie-Bogle by an anonymous author and The Tattie-Bogle by William Soutar. 

For Halloween, you might keep your decorative tattie-bogles on the friendly side,
so you don't frighten the wee bairns who come trick-or-treating!
Image by HANSUAN FABREGAS from Pixabay

*Tattie means potato, but you probably guessed that from the context. According to Merriam-Webster, first use was in 1788.