2005-08-29

Dreein the weird

Scots has two verbs corresponding to English "endure, put up with":

thole
to put up with something because one has no choice
dree
to put up with something as a choice

Vocabularists may be interested in this contrast. I found it at a page of Scots prescriptivism written in Scots.

The phrase "dree one's weird", therefore, means not merely to endure one's fate, but to choose to endure one's fate.

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