"Scotch is not just a drink" Topic

At the club, I was rebuked by the Club Know-it All for wilfully referring to my "Scotch Napoleonic infantry".

I was told I should know better: "Scotch is a drink, Scots or Scottish are the people."

Well, until the end of the C19th, "Scotch" was the preferred word for the people north of the border & this was still a viable choice until the mid 1900s when the Edinburgh Grammar Nazis orchestrated the change to "Scots".

So if it was good enough for Wellington to refer to his "Scotch infantry" or Burns to use it in his poetry,it's good enough for me. I could add the ignorant so & so was from south of the border but that's probably redundant.

BTW Americans used to refer to migrants from Ulster as "Scotch-Irish". Is this still current?

call them Scitchish till he blows a gasket.

huh. Learn something new everyday. I always thought the blowhard was right.

I believe the current term is now "Scots-Irish".

edit: Just looked at the other thread, now I don't know what to think.

I always heard "Scotch-Irish" as e term when I was growing up in the U.S. South. Don't really hear it at all, these days. I think the meaning and the intention has been lost, at least in the common vernacular.

Same as Parzival, except I'm in California. My grandparents used the term regarding one branch of our family. Never heard Scots-Irish until here.

The Grants and Macleans in my family called themselves Scotch-Irish. I like to play grammar police sometimes, but never took the time to think about that. Interesting.

How many generations back was any of them born in Scotland or Ireland?

Scotch is not a term used now…. Nor, in Scotland at least, is Scots-Irish…