Growk
July 26th 2025
The Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL) tell us that to growk is, “to look at someone with a watchful or suspicious eye.” This can be seen in Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s Sunset Song (1932): “So she [ran] and caught him up at the foot of the playground, he growked at her and said Haw?”
However, it can also mean, “to look longingly at something, esp. of a child or dog begging for food”. An early example in DSL comes from J.B. Salmond’s My Man Sandy (1894): Nathan was stanin’ at the table as uswal, growk-growkin’ awa’ for a bit o’ my tea biskit. ‘I dinna like growkin’ bairns,’ I says to Nathan.”
The Arbroath Herald provides a couple of examples. The first, in July 1898, also from J.B. Salmond: “‘Weel, than, he has nae business growkin’ like yon’.” Then, in April 1911, within a description of two children eyeing their brother’s apple: “An older and a younger one of the family – a girl and a boy – have a ‘growkin’-like look in their eyes.”
Unfortunately, the word appears to have significantly declined in popularity since, though it features in Andrew McNeil’s Temples Fae Creels (1999): “We ken we’re lucky like We dinna hae the growk O bairns missin food.”
Mentions of growk are now largely restricted to compilations of unfamiliar words, such as Charles Harrington Elster’s There’s a Word for It (2005) and Susie Dent’s Words from the Heart (2022). It’d be a shame to lose such a useful term; perhaps parents and dog-owners can help it make a comeback?
Dictionaries of the Scots Language would like to thank Bob Dewar for illustrating our Scots Word of the Week feature.
