AULD

[Dr. Goodword]

• auld •

Pronunciation: ôld or awld • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: Old (Scots English).

Notes: In most English-speaking regions midnight of January 1 is celebrated as New Year's Eve. The celebration was previously known as Old Year's Night, which remains in English-speaking Guyana and some other areas of the Caribbean.

In Play: Many English speakers around the world sang the very popular Scottish song, Auld lang sine "Old long since" at 12 AM this morning, including those living in Auld Reekie "Old Smoky", a sobriquet of Edinburgh, Scotland and elsewhere in the auld warld.

Word History: Today's Good Word was eald in Old English, a word which developed into Modern English old and Scots English auld. The original Proto-Indo-European root, *al- meant "grow, nourish", and with the suffix -to (*al-to) meant "grown". With the suffix -m, it turned up in Latin almus "nourishing", the feminine of which is the alma in alma mater "the nourishing mother" = a school from which you graduate. Alumnus and alumna are based on the same root; they mean "student, pupil" in Latin, from alere "to nourish".

[Brazilian dude]

Related are aliment and alimentation.

Brazilian dude

[KatyBr]

It takes guts to be auld?

Kt

[M. Henri Day]

...

The celebration was previously known as Old Year's Night, which remains in English-speaking Guyana and some other areas of the Caribbean.

...

Many English speakers around the world sang the very popular Scottish song, Auld lang sine "Old long since" at 12 AM this morning, including those living in Auld Reekie "Old Smoky", a sobriquet of Edinburgh, Scotland and elsewhere in the auld warld.

...

My bet is that in Auld Reekie, they were most probably celebrating Hogmanay....

Henri