“Dae ye no think yir dad’ll be lookin fur his galluses?”
Translate:
galluses: braces, for holding up ones trousers.
“Do you not think your dad will be looking for his braces?”
The Scottish Word: galluses with its definition and its meaning illustrated and captioned with the word used in context in the Scots language and in English.
When I was a boy in Burnley about 1939/1940I was wearing short trousers and braces. I remember standing on the backyard of Basnet Street when the local milkman Tom Rookin, arrived with his horse and cart and milk churn in the ten foot behind the house. Seeing me in my shorts and braces, he said to me “has tha got tha galluses on”. I remember as yesterday.
We use gallus often. Someone bold/cheeky, strong, over confident even, feeling good, possibly dressed in their finest gear. Gallus.
Galluses, (never heard it before) would be worn in the past, alot. Not nowadays. So gallus must pre-date galluses. “He’s away intae toon the night, wi’s galluses on”. Possibly. Just for clarity, the gallusness is subjective. Others often see someone elses gullus behaviour as unfounded. The gallus person can often be a bawbag, in the view of others.
I’ve just been reading about the Celts and the spread of the Celtic language / culture. Coincidentally, I’d earlier been thinking about the origins of gallus. When this jumped out :
“A Latin name for the Gauls, Galli (pl.), may come from a Celtic ethnic name, perhaps borrowed into Latin during the Celtic expansion into Italy from the early fifth century BC. Its root may be Proto-Celtic *galno, meaning “power, strength” (whence Old Irish gal “boldness, ferocity”, Welsh gallu “to be able, power”)”
Which suggest gallus could well be an echo from Cumbric. Before anyone thinks it might be the Irish origin, Gaelic was likely never spoken by the people of the Glasgow area. See the Kingdom of Strathclyde. Can’t recall ever hearing anyone outside of the Glasgow area using gallus. Rambling now, but either way, the root in both is clearly the same.
Cheers.