SCOTTISH, no Scoych

You are a grumpy republican !

According to Merriam Webster online--

Origin and Etymology of Scotch
contraction of Scottish

First Known Use: 1591


The movie was made in the mid 1930s when that contraction was sometimes employed in Scotland but more commonly abroad, including the name of the beverage, Scotch whisky, which the dictionary says was in use starting around 1700. That was not the only contraction of that type that was once popular. Pennsylvania Dutch had a similar construction, from Deutsch (German), and it is the origin of the word for the Dutch people and language of the Germanic part of the Netherlands.

Scotch has fallen out of fashion except for describing a few items, such as Scotch pie, Scotch broth, and Scotch eggs. In one case it still describes people, the Scotch-Irish, Ulster Scots who settled much of the Appalachian region of the US, among other places in the US and Canada. As Scotland gains power and could vote for independence, the emphasis is on reclaiming their own cultural ways. Scotch is seen as a pejorative or as a colonial term.

However that antagonism toward the imperialists is much less in other parts of the world including North America where the Scots were not widely abused so the feeling is that Scotch and Scottish have the same meaning but to please the Scots we will try to do it the way they want, out of respect. Saying a person is Scotch is now a sign that the speaker is elderly or not well educated, but in North America it is very rarely a slur. Along with the decline in the use of the adjective Scotch, in the late 1800s-early 1900s the Scots who have come to North America have often been highly educated and often as engineers, enviably given a free education but sadly without enough jobs at home. That has caused a tremendous shift in the way they are perceived here. It isn't the rural comedy of Harry Lauder that tells us what the Scots are like. It's working with them on technologically sophisticated projects.

That shift was evident in the 1930s, too, but it would take time before old habits died out. My parents as young marrieds in the late 1930s lived in a double house with a middle aged Scottish couple on the other side. The man was an engineer who made a lot more than my father. They were saving money to retire back home, as many Scots did, which gave them a reputation for unusual frugality, such as this couple using my parents' telephone and living in what was, let's face it, a pretty dreadful rental unit, even if my father's grandfather WAS the builder and owner. (He was much better at putting up barns!) They hung out with other ex pats, talked longingly of the beauties of Scotland until my father was sick of hearing about the place, and I imagine they had to go home when WWII broke out. I hope they survived the war. It was that generation that turned the popular view of Scots from rural simpletons to movers and shakers. My father called them Scotch when I first heard his stories about them but somewhere along the way changed to the more "modern" term, Scottish. This movie was made in that time of transition and is therefore very interesting for the historian.

Wiki says--
In the 1937 film "Storm in a Teacup", the Scottish/Scotch debate is a running joke. In one scene, Vicky (Vivian Leigh) is mixing cocktails. She explains to Frank (Rex Harrison) that her father Provost Gow (Cecil Parker) who is standing for Parliament as a member of the "Caledonia League", "...wants to be prime minister of the first Scotch parliament." "Scottish, Vicky, Scottish!" her father pompously corrects her. "Well then, fix yourself a scottish and soda!" she replies, and flounces out the door. In another scene one of Gow's Caledonia League minions says to him "I've never seen the like in thirty years of Scotch politics!", with the same stern rebuke from the Provost.