Meaning
In Scots, greet can mean to weep, cry, lament, whimper, or complain tearfully; as a noun, a greet can mean a bout or fit of crying.
How it is used
Dictionaries of the Scots Language records greet as a broad Scots verb for weeping, crying, whimpering, lamenting, and sometimes complaining, together with noun uses for a sob or bout of weeping. Merriam-Webster independently labels the intransitive verb Scotland and defines it as weep or lament. The Scots sense is distinct from Standard English greet meaning to welcome or address someone, so grammar and context do most of the disambiguation.
Examples
- “The bairn started to greet when the toy broke.”
- “She had a good greet after the news finally sank in.”
- “There's no need to greet about it all afternoon.”
Pronunciation
/ɡrit/ · greet
Tone and register
Usually emotional or descriptive. Depending on context it can describe genuine grief, a child's crying, a cathartic cry, or mildly dismissive complaining; it is not inherently comic.
Visitor guidance
Visitors should not assume greet always means hello or welcome in Scottish contexts. Phrases such as have a good greet, started greeting, or the bairn's greeting can refer to crying. The word belongs to Scots vocabulary with historical depth, so treating it as a novelty pronunciation joke misses its separate lexical meaning.
Cultural context
Greet is a clear example of Scots preserving a common-looking spelling with a meaning that diverges sharply from mainstream Standard English. The Scottish National Dictionary documents verb forms such as grat and grutten as well as modern quotations for having a greet. That grammatical depth makes the entry useful for reading literature, conversation, and regional writing rather than merely recognizing a tourist word list.
Origin
Dictionaries of the Scots Language traces Scots greet through Older Scots and northern Middle English material, with related historical verb and noun forms. Merriam-Webster separately preserves the Scottish weep or lament sense. Maperla records the long regional history without conflating it with Standard English greet meaning welcome.
Places represented
Open the reviewed place guide for each regional sense carried by this canonical entry.