dawt

dawt

English

Alternative forms

• daut

Verb

dawt (third-person singular simple present dawts, present participle dawting, simple past and past participle dawted)

1. (Scotland) To fondle or caress.
   • 1788, Robert Burns, To Dawt on Me, in 2004 [1886], The Complete Works of Robert Burns, Part Two, page 163,

     To dawt on me, and me sae young, / Wi' his fause heart and flatt'ring tongue, / That is the thing you shall never see, / For an auld man shall never dawt on me.

   • c.18thC, in 1976, Thomas Crawford (editor), Love, Labour, and Liberty: the eighteenth-century Scottish lyric, page 79,

     Let him kiss her, clap her, and dawt her, / And gie her benevolence due, / And that will a thrifty wife mak her, / And sae I'll bid farewell to you.

   • c.1882-1896, Francis James Child, Number 277: The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin, in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads,

     He courted her and he brought her hame, / An thought she would prove a thrifty dame. / She could nether spin nor caird, / But sit in her chair and dawt the laird.