bauchle

present singular third person bauchles · participle present bauchling · participle past bauchled · past bauchled

1. ScotlandTo misuse, to bungle.

   Maybe that shot that ye think ye bauchled was the most providential shot ye ever fired...

   1925, John Buchan, John Macnab

   1 more example

   Our enemies were disputing not far off upon the deck, and that so loudly that I could hear a word or two above the washing of the seas. “It was Shuan bauchled it,” I heard one say.

   1886, Robert Louis Stephenson, Kidnapped

2. ScotlandTo insult, to upbraid, to make a fool of someone.

   1 more example

   An echo of "bauchling" lingered on, it seemed to me, in Cumbrian rural police courts until a few years ago. Nowhere else, as a court reporter, have I heard so much abusive interruption and blasphemous invocation from the public benches during the hearing of cases. Cumbrian magistrates dealt with it most tolerantly.

   1972, George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets, page 152

plural bauchles

1. Scotlandin pluralAn old shoe.

   1842, Laird of Logan, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, issue 481, page 104. We a' ken that there's tongues in heads, but I ne'er heard o' ony in hats or bauchles afore.

2. ScotlandA fool.

   He adds, probably his letter would be propaled and made a bauchle of, and assures them he was never loved at Court as a minister.

   1843, Robert Woodrow, The life of Mister Robert Bruce, Minister at Edinburgh, page 92

3. ScotlandA bungled or muddled situation; a mess.