soothmoother

English

Etymology

A reference to the south mouth of Lerwick Harbour, the main entry point to the Shetland Isles.

Noun

soothmoother (plural soothmoothers)

1. (Shetland, Orkney) An outsider; Someone who is not native to the isles, especially someone from the south.
   • 1980, Marsha Elizabeth Renwanz, From crofters to Shetlanders:

     Several of my soothmoother informants pointed out that the Shetlands were not the only islands to have been visited by the Vikings.

   • 1983, William Reginald Mitchell, Birdwatch Around Scotland, page 93:

     I was a 'soothmoother', arriving in Lerwick from the south.

   • 1985, Susan A. Knox, The making of the Shetland landscape, page 88:

     During the 1860s when Delting, North Unst and North Yell were divided, the Garth estate was managed by its factor, John Walker, a 'soothmoother' from Aberdeenshire.

   • 1987, Anthony Paul Cohen, Whalsay: Symbol, Segment, and Boundary in a Shetland Island Community:

     But in Whalsay his distance from those bereaved has an added dimension, for he is an outsider, a soothmoother.

   • 1996, Jim Hewitson, Clinging to the Edge: Journals from an Orkney Island, page 41:

     Here on Papay folk will speak slowly and sympathetically in a one-to-one conversation with a 'soothmoother', but if you're on the fringes of a pierhead debate about the price of cattle or the weather, then you'll soon be submerged beneath a fast-flowing terminological tidal wave.

   • 2013, Ann Cleeves, Dead Water:

     She might be a soothmoother, but she lived in Shetland now, and she'd been good to Jimmy Perez after the business on Fair Isle.