Meaning
In Scots and Scottish usage, wheesht is a call for silence meaning hush, be quiet, or keep silent. Related forms can also work as a verb meaning to silence someone or become quiet, and as a noun referring to silence.
How it is used
The Scottish National Dictionary records whisht with variants including wheesht and defines the interjection as a call for silence—hush, be quiet, keep silent, or shut up—while also documenting verb and noun uses. Collins independently labels wheesh or wheesht Scottish and gives the same core silence meanings.
Examples
- “Wheesht a minute and let her finish.”
- “The room finally wheeshted when the announcement began.”
- “Haud your wheesht until we hear the result.”
Pronunciation
/ʍiːʃt/ · WHEESHT
Tone and register
The force depends heavily on delivery. It can be a light request for quiet among familiar speakers or a sharper command telling someone to stop talking, so the same word can sound playful, practical, or brusque.
Visitor guidance
Visitors mainly need to recognize wheesht as a request for silence. Because a direct call to be quiet can sound abrupt in any language, copying the word toward strangers is less useful than understanding it when heard. Spelling varies, so whisht, wheesht, wheesh, and weesht can belong to the same lexical family in Scots records.
Cultural context
Wheesht illustrates the depth and variation of Scots vocabulary: the national dictionary records the silence family across regions and centuries rather than as a modern novelty expression. It also appears in the traditional phrase haud or keep one's wheesht, meaning to remain quiet or hold one's tongue.
Origin
Dictionaries of the Scots Language records older Scots forms of the silence interjection before 1700 and Scottish National Dictionary evidence from the eighteenth century onward. Maperla records that documented Scots history without claiming that the sound-imitative family originated exclusively in Scotland.
Places represented
Open the reviewed place guide for each regional sense carried by this canonical entry.