Conrad Hennessy, an old friend of mine who now lives in Dalkey, asks about the northern word scundered, which as a verb has a variety of related meanings. First of all it means to feel disgust; it also means to nauseate someone; used loosely, it means to annoy; and used with at, it means to regard with disgust. As a noun it means disgust, dislike; and something that causes disgust. You'll hear scundersome for repulsive; and to be scundered means that one is sick and tired of a certain diet. The very common to take a scunder at something or somebody means to develop an aversion to it or them.
C.I. Macafee's Concise Ulster Dictionary, which Oxford has allowed to go out of print, alas, points out that scunder, and another Ulster varient sconner, are mistakenly "corrected" forms of scunner, a more common word in Donegal, at least, and possibly elsewhere.
Scunner is found in Scots and in England's north county. Dunbar in one of his poems composed shortly after 1500 has: `In harte he tuke . . . sic ane scunner.' Scott, in the forgettable The Surgeon's Daughter (1827), has "I thought she seemed to gie a scunner at the eggs and bacon that Nurse Simson spoke about to her". As to origin, nobody has a clue.
A question from Mary White,a young lady from Sandycove, who started secondary school last week. Why do we write tyre and the Americans tire? is her question.
Tire and tyre are found in the 15th century; the words then meant a metal rim placed around a wheel to protect it. Tire was a shortened form of attire, clothing, a Middle English borrowing from French atirer, to put in order. In the seventeenth century tire was the norm; and went to America with the Colonists. The English stuck with tyre. That's about it Mary.
R.S. Boyd, writing from Bangor, Co. Down, wonders about a word of his father's, an Antrim man. Whenever young R.S. got up to mischief, his father would use the mildly reproachful word scurravogue, something akin to rogue or rascal.
From the sound of it I thought it might be Irish or Scots Gaelic, but no. It is undoubtedly from the Scots scurryvaig, glossed in Mairi Robinson's Concise Scots Dictionary as a vagabond; an idle, unkempt, or slatternly person; a lout; a scullion. Nobody has traced it further back than Scots, although the Latin scurra vagus, a wandering clown, has been suggested. That, I would think, is a long shot.