Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Scots A hut or small cottage.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A small cottage; a hut.
- n. A house for the accommodation of a number of workpeople in the employment of the same person or company. More especially, a kind of barrack in connection with a large farm, where the unmarried outdoor servants and laborers are lodged.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Scot. A wooden hut or humble cot, esp. a rude hut or barrack for unmarried farm servants; a shepherd's or hunter's hut; a booth.
Etymologies
- Origin uncertain. Perhaps compare Scottish Gaelic bothag, diminutive of both ("hut"); but the derivation is uncertain since th has been mute in Gaelic for several centuries. (Wiktionary)
- Ultimately from Old Irish both, hut. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I lived in a broken down long-deserted shepherd's hut, known as a bothy, out on a windy Scottish mountainside, without electricity.”
“The other was the head of the "bothy" or boarding-house for hired men,”
“The master of a stately park in Devon, a moor and "bothy" in the highlands, a villa on the Arno, a gem of a cottage in the Isle of”
“[A bothy is a cottage or hut where labouring servants are lodged, and is sometimes built of wood, as we read in the _Jacobite Relics_, ii.”
“bothy" is frequently used in an article called "News from the Farm.”
“Meals are served either in the grand hall at the 15th-century core of the tower, in a loch-side bothy, or in an enormous tree house in the garden.”
The Guardian: Recession? What recession? Hire a Scottish castle for £60,000 a week
“There are three small camping areas and a private bothy, dotted in and around the orchard and the forest.”
“Any word on why you think Progressive ideals are bad for the country ‘at the core’ yet, bothy?”
“This is a world of baronial drip-dry tartan with a flat-pack bothy fit for murder and a ghost that oozes bloodily from a cardboard box, despite the bin-liner.”
The Guardian: Macbeth, The Love for Three Oranges, Armida, A Midsummer Night's Dream
“Christ, she's drunk as an auld besom in a bothy," said a voice in my ear.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘bothy’.
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Most Obscure Words
acatalectic, acosmism, acuate, acuminate, adscititious, adytum, akratisma, alieniloquy, allelomorph, allochiria, allodium, alnage and 620 more...
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Under The Kilt
Anything related to Scottish culture, cuisine, language, history and so on. Does not include Gaelic words unless acceptable (roughly speaking!) in a wider sense.
brae, machair, loch, burn, inverness, shieling, camanachd, shinty, diddy, bhoy, ghillie, brownie and 393 more...
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words
absquatulate, conceivable, daylight, fuselage, necromancy, obsequiously, orotund, pusillanimous, tooth, abhor, abide, abscissa and 111 more...
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fbharjo's Words
jumelle, kef, kenspeckle, lautitious, essentic, pilpulistic, impavid, cicurant, clou, chrysostomic, miasma, teleology and 1625 more...
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flannagan's Words
netop, kenspeckle, loden, framboise, providence, milquetoast, schism, cadence, thrush, asphodel, clandestine, aesthete and 196 more...
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looked up
Words I've come across while reading and looked up in the dictionary.
deesis, pendentive, revetment, aedicule, stemma, patera, ephod, entrepot, corbel, exedra, volute, archivolt and 1408 more...
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Desserts of Random Palavery
Another of my Random Palavery lists, still an eclectic listing of terms that catch my eye and ear. It can't be helped. I am, (as a former partner phrased it) a word-bird.
chablis, ervy, keek, armiger, argand lamp, arblast, milch-cow, cow-calf units, durrus, tom noddy, low-bell, cargo cult and 139 more...
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miscellanea
antimacassar, snootful, sessile, glagolitic, marrowsky, farrago, keel, calumny, rheum, talisman, tally, awry and 508 more...
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persnickety parlance
behoove, ebullient, insouciant, insipient, froth, quandary, quixotic, tendril, maktub, furrow, furl, anastrophe and 1076 more...
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5-1
Hecko, words! Thanks for staying with me. :-)
avenue, viscous, zeroth, usher, scarcely, viability, snout, sole, purify, riotous, menace, moist and 364 more...
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The Crow Road
Words encountered while reading Iain Banks's terrific "The Crow Road"
machair, brindle, nimrod, cullen skink, lochan, the kyles of bute, kip, gateaux blaster, condign, percussive cremation, ballast mound, braw and 71 more...
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Britishisms
Tweets
Looking for tweets for bothy.
bilby "None of these would be opportunities which would be bargain basement ones, but the estate also hosts an open bothy run by the Mountain Bothies Association, where the walker can overnight at not cost at all. The maintenance of such a facility is essential, so that people are not priced out of access to places like Alladale. One problem with the bothy is that till now, fallen timber has been used for fuel."
- 'The Alladale Experiment', Ian Mitchell in The Scots Magazine, Jul 2004. Feb 7, 2008