oxter ScoE

The term oxter is used in the Scots language instead of "armpit".

He says,How many Leaders have you under your oxter?

He want to Put your head near my oxter, Sassenach.

I touched the hair in his oxter and stroked it, surprised at the soft, silky feel of it.

'Benson's carrying a gun in his oxter, and Ashton is carrying another.

Oxter (Episode 30)

In the U.K., the axilla is called the oxter.

It has survived as the English dialectal oxter ('armpit', 'arm').

The black dagger (sgian-dubh) was usually carried in a place of concealment very often under his armpit (or oxter).

Oxter (Return of Ultraman Episode 31)

The axilla (or armpit, underarm, or oxter) is the area on the human body directly under the joint where the arm connects to the shoulder.

As oxter means 'armpit,' the original did not appeal to me and, if I was sent a review copy, I didn't bother to open the book.

"There was many a good man went to the penny-a-week school with a sod of turf under his oxter," said Mr. Kernan sententiously.

Ye canna live in a man's oxter for three years without learning a great many things ye dinna want to know about him, let alone something like that."

"You rub your oxter over the beast's nose a few times, to give him your scent and get him accustomed to you, so he won't be nervous of ye."

"Ye've a bone-deep slash down your arm from oxter to elbow, and had I not got a cloth round it in time, ye'd be feeding the sharks this minute!"

By your way of it, you're Balfour of the Shaws; but for what I ken you may be Balfour of the Deevil's oxter.

DEIL HAE ME, quo' he; an' I see the deil at his oxter."

The pastiches about Finn MacCool and his men are roll-on-the-floor funny (he said, hiding behind a spear, with a pig under each oxter and a hedgehog sewn into his hempen drawers).

He was wearing his original costume of plaid and armor again, having shed "such trews that doona let a man hang properly and an inar that canna conceal an oxter knife" as soon as he'd awakened that morning.

And begob what was it only that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen in his bathslippers with two bloody big books tucked under his oxter and the wife hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched woman, trotting like a poodle.

There was whiles he thocht the black man was at his oxter, an' the swat stood upon him cauld as well-water; and there was other whiles, when he cam to himsel' like a christened bairn and minded naething.

And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin.

And then, second, if they keep the track of us, it may come to a fecht for it yet, Davie; and then, I'll confess I would be blythe to have you at my oxter, and I think you would be none the worse of having me at yours.