Like all big cities, Edinburgh has a language of all its own. Or at least that’s how it must seem to outsiders.
Bog – toilet
Bunker – worktop, kitchen counter
Cheesin: happy
Chore: To steal something
Chum – join on a journey (Chumming a friend doon the road)
Deek – look at
Dinnae – don’t
Embra – Edinburgh
Hud-oan – wait, as in wait for me
Haud yer weesht – be quiet
Ken – Know. (‘I ken what you mean’)
Feart – afraid of
Foostie – stale
Gadgie: usually used to describe a man or boy who engages in loutish behaviour.
Nash: Hurry up
Radge – crazy or uncontrollable (A person can either be a radge, ‘go radge’, or do something radge)
Reekin’ – drunk
Steamin’ – see above
Scoobied – clueless (Scooby Doo is rhyming slang for clue)
Shan – a shame, or disappointing (A bad day at work could be ‘well shan’). Can also mean unkind (‘that was shan saying that to him’)
Source: Here are 22 words and phrases you’ll only know if you’re from Edinburgh
Ahem….six of your twenty two supposedly uniquely Edinburgh expressions (to wit: Bog, Deek, Dinnae, Ken, Steamin’ and Reekin’) have been in common British Isles English with the same meanings) for at least seventy years. I’m seventy five and I remember hearing and using these expressions as a kid in England. Sure, we knew they were mostly Scottish words, but it’s not as if we southern types (actually I’m Irish, but grew up in Surrey and Hampshire) never visited other parts of the British Isles
Many’s the Glaswegian who’s familiar with London slang, gnarly West Country banter and the chipper sing-song of the Yorkshire Dales. Similarly many of us “southerners” could do a passable job of puttin on the innumerable Welsh, Scots or Irish renditions English. As any linguist will attest, there is an astonishing range of radically different dialects in what is, by global standards, a small island. It was a form of entertainment for us to ape the ones we could manage, although I have to admit I always found Geordie impossible.