Foutering and Foostering – A Hard to Spell Word History
Hello,
When your friends and family know you as a word enthusiast you sometimes get odd questions fired in your direction. The latest came from a friend in Canada to our group chat online one evening. She wanted to know how to spell a word that means to tinker with something but had realised that while she says it aloud fairly often, she had no idea how to spell it – was it foother or futher?
I was nowhere near my mobile phone at the time so the conversation dragged in the whole gang before I reached for my dictionaries. Somebody suggested foostering and all agreed they weren’t certain of the spelling but used the word in conversation to mean fiddling around with something in an aimless way.
In some ways, all their suggestions were correct as I discovered when I hit the books the next day. Better late than never, as they say.
My Scots dictionary listed footer or fouter for somebody who potters with a fiddly task. The task itself can even be called a footery or fouterie (a touch of French spelling on that last one). The key here is that it’s foot being pronounced as fout, not like a foot on the end of your leg which is more like fut if you think about it.
It also appeared in my Hiberno-English dictionary with four different spellings but all rooted in the same Irish Gaelic verb fústar (fussy behaviour). The accent (called a fada, meaning long) on the letter u means you lengthen the sound of the vowel – hence it being written with a double oo or ou in English. Fooster, foosther, footer, and foother. It was becoming clear that because the word comes as a borrowing from Irish Gaelic and/or Scots Gaelic there’s no agreed spelling for the word in English. I should mention that it doesn’t really turn up in the British English dictionaries.
Sadly I don’t have a dictionary for Ulster Scots (yet) but my mother was reared in that community and she used the word regularly. Given the Ulster Scots links to Scots Gaelic I’d be surprised if foutering isn’t there in some form.
I suspected, from the spelling, that fooster might appear in American English dictionaries and sure enough, it does. Its roots are listed there as being from the same Irish Gaelic verb fústar. Interesting that the letter s is only in the American English spelling of the word, despite being in the original Irish verb, while in Ireland it’s more likely to be said without an s sound in it.
Personally I’ve settled upon foutering as the spelling I will use, as footering is too confusing as it’s so close to words like foot and football, and foostering is American English. However, any of the variations are acceptable. It amused me to spend time foutering with the word fouter. It seemed appropriate given its meaning.
Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,
Grace (@Wordfoolery)
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