# 5.3.3 Gaelic loanwords in English

All languages take words from each other. Gaelic borrows from English – after all, almost all Gaelic speakers also speak English – but English has also borrowed from Gaelic over the years. Examples include a number of words for geographical features associated with Scotland such as:

- ben (beinn)
- brae (bràigh)
- corry (coire).
- glen (gleann)
- loch (loch).

Words of cultural origin include:

- caber (from ‘cabar’ – a tree trunk).
- ceilidh
- clan (from ‘clann’ – children)
- galore (‘gu leòr’ – enough)
- slogan (probably from ‘sluagh-ghairm’ – a war cry)
- sporran (‘sporan’ – a purse)
- whisky (from ‘uisge’, short for ‘uisge-beatha’ – water of life)

More speculative suggestions of borrowings from Gaelic to English include:

- grotty (from ‘grod’ – rotten)
- smashing (from ‘’S math sin’ - that’s good)
- shoot (from ‘siuthad’ – go on)
- twig (from ‘tuig’ – understand)!

OpenLearn - Gaelic in modern Scotland
Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.