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 [1886], Robert Burns, “To Dawt on Me”, in The Complete Works of Robert Burns, volume 2, Kessinger, published 2004, 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. 18th century, Some Say Kissing's A Sin; republished in Thomas Crawford, editor, Love, Labour, and Liberty: the eighteenth-century Scottish lyric, Carcanet Press, 1976, 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.

Synonyms

• faddle, grope, pettle, tiddle; see also Thesaurus:fondle

Scots

Verb

dawt

1. fondle, caress