owsyn

Middle English

Alternative forms

owssing, owsyin

Noun

owsyn

(Early Scots) plural of oxe

Middle Scots

Alternative forms

oussin

Etymology

inherited from Early Scots owsyn (first attested c. 1420),^[1] potentially representing a "vernacular" divergent development of Germanic /xs/ supplanted by the spread of /ks/ from the south except in this relic word; compare forms such as /fɒʊ̯s/ “fox”, /sɛɪ̯s/ “six”, and /wæɪ̯s/ “wax” recorded for the dialect of Huddersfield, Yorkshire by Haigh.^[2]

Noun

owsyn

plural of ox
Synonym: oxin (more common)

References

^ “owsyn”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from William A[lexander] Craigie, A[dam] J[ack] Aitken [et al.], editors, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1931–2002, →OCLC.
^ Haigh, Walter E. (1928), A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District‎^[1], London: Oxford University Press, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 September 2025.

[1] “owsyn”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC, reproduced from William A[lexander] Craigie, A[dam] J[ack] Aitken [et al.], editors, A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, 1931–2002, →OCLC.

[2] Haigh, Walter E. (1928), A New Glossary of the Dialect of the Huddersfield District‎^[1], London: Oxford University Press, →OCLC, archived from the original on 11 September 2025.

[1]

[2]