bothy

English

A bothy in Perthshire

Alternative forms

Etymology

Probably from booth + -y.

Pronunciation

  • (Ireland) IPA(key): /ˈbʌhi/
  • (UK) IPA(key): /ˈbɒ.θi/
  • (file)
  • (General American) IPA(key): /ˈbɑθi/
  • (file)

Noun

bothy (plural bothies)

  1. (Scotland, Ireland, Northumberland) A small cottage, especially one for communal use in remote areas by labourers or farmhands, or as a mountain shelter. [from 18th c.]
    • 1929, Josephine Tey, The Man in the Queue, The Macmillan Company:
      But civilization had changed that completely. Not one criminal in a thousand now fled to the Highlands or to Wales for refuge. A man demanded the means of food and shelter in his retreat nowadays, and a deserted bothy or a cave on the hillside was out of date.
    • 1955, Robin Jenkins, The Cone-Gatherers, Canongate, published 2012, page 106:
      Often Neil sat in their bothy on winter nights and told Calum about seas he had never seen.
    • 1982, Gene Wolfe, chapter XXVII, in The Sword of the Lictor (The Book of the New Sun; 3), New York: Timescape, →ISBN, page 200:
      Then, in the evening of the second day after I had climbed from the pupil of the right eye, I came upon a shepherd's bothy, a sort of beehive of stone, and found in it a cooking pot and a quantity of ground corn.
    • 1995, Alan Warner, Morvern Callar, Vintage, published 2015, page 12:
      The Bog Creeper came out her wee bothy so I stood on the toilet seat and Lanna whipped her skirt down to her boots and sat.

Derived terms

Translations

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