Thing Not To Be Today: shilpit.

The Scots have given us many fine and vigorous words, and shilpit is a cherishable example.

You can hear the contempt of it in the sound.

Shilpit means weak, puny, pinched or starved. If it's liquor that's shilpit then it's poor thin stuff; if it's a person they'll be unhealthily pale with sickness (and perhaps trembling, too, though the tremor may be down to cowardice); if it's an ear of corn that's shilpit then it'll be empty and thin.

Shilpit milk (especially in Shetland) will be sour, and someone's shilpit manner of speaking will be tart.

I don't aspire to being shilpit in any of its meanings, but I do wish I were a Scot so I could use the word.

Thing Not To Be Today: shilpit. The first record of this word seems to have been in 1802. Most dictionaries don't have any idea of the origin of them word, but the online Dictionary of the Scots Language references the Old Scots word schilpitness, which means feebleness, and speaks of its being a variant of shirpit, from shirp, a word meaning shrivelled.