SGIONC

SGIONC, 132, forcing an object into an aperture less than the object itself, eg putting a large cork into a narrow-necked bottle.

 

“She was sgionc-ed into a dress,” laughed Màiri Thormoid (Eriskay) when the word came back to her (after saying no, she didn’t know it). That made my day. “If you had a dress on, or clothes of any sort, and it was awfully small for you, you’d say they were sgionc-ed into the dress. And in fact you see enough of that on the television!”

Another woman from Eriskay has written to me about sgionc: “speaking of a woman in a tight dress, ‘She was so sgionc-ed’. Too right.”

This word seems to be a variant of sginn, which Dwelly uses for spring, force. Sging is given as Badenoch, Argyll & W. of Ross for sginn. Sging e troimh, he squeezed through. It has also been recorded under “sging” in a word list compiled in Inverness, Kessock, Charleston: “huddle, draw in, cram in; OG sceng; Uist sgionc (v) – to squeeze in still more.”

 

 

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