howdie

plural howdies

1. alternativeAlternative form of howdy (a midwife).

   'I've sent Davie for Lizzie, the howdie,' she said. 'Ye're not to worry. A seven month bairn can survive.'

   2011, Catherine M. Byrne, Follow the Dove, →ISBN, page 110

   3 more examples

   It's a beautiful point of presumptive murder, and there's been nane like it in the Justiciar Court since the case of Luckie Smith the howdie, that suffered in the year saxteen hundred and seventy-nine.

   1818 July 25, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter IV, in Tales of My Landlord, Second Series, […] (The Heart of Mid-Lothian), volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Company, →OCLC, pages 121–122

   Sae Beatrice wis ready whan she wis cried on in the middle o the nicht tae halp the howdie. It wis a saicont bairn, an Derriakin wis muckle-boukit, sae the birth gaed quick.

   2011, Wulf Kurtoglu, Caroline Macafee, Braken Fences, →ISBN, page 195

   The children born in Hawick in the olden times were, with few exceptions, ushered into the world with the aid of the howdie or midwife; for the practice of midwifery was, unless in very special cases, almost confined to women.

   2012, Margaret Bennett, Scottish Customs: From the Cradle to the Grave, →ISBN

1. alternativeAlternative form of howdy.

   Howdie there, Wanda. How about a cuppa .

   1984, Preston Jones, A Place on the Magdalena Flats: A Play in Three Acts, →ISBN, page 60

   2 more examples

   He says howdie and says he got a deal for Doogan.

   2015 November 24, Kristine Francis, “NCIS Recap 11/24/15: Season 13 Episode 10 "Blood Brothers"”, in Celebrity Dirty Laundry

   Then he went round the gypsy saying “Howdie?” to the youngsters inside, who obviously seemed fear stricken.

   2016 May 21, Sunita Mudaliar, “Trying to control tourists in Umred-Karhandla is not such a good idea!”, in Nagpur Today