“Toast nivir lands butter side doon as afen as is thocht. An if it does, it’s a sure sign there’s attery oot an aboot that shouldni. That’s why I built this universal attery detector.”
Translate:
attery: malignant, venomous.
“Toast never lands butter side down as often as is thought. And if it does, it is a sure sign that there is malignancy out and about that should not be. That is why I built this universal malignancy detector.”
contraption.
In Terry Pratchett’s Thief of Time the Death of Rats demonstrates to Death that there is venomous work afoot using the machine that is interpreted here.
The auditors are at work and they hate humanity because it is unpredictable, creative and difficult to measure.
They are scheming to freeze all life in a single instance of time. Thus removing life from the Universe.
They prefer numbers that can be easily counted and are always scheming to negate the effects of life in order to reduce the Cosmos to a purely arithmetical state.
Much like modern accountants and insurance firms.
The Scottish Word: attery with its definition and its meaning illustrated and captioned with the word used in context in the Scots language and in English.