Guidness

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The quality of being good, a term used in Scots for moral goodness or virtue
2. Moral excellence or goodness of character, as the word is used in Scottish dialect
3. The state or quality of being good, particularly in the older Scots sense of virtue

Etymology: "Guidness" is a Scottish-English form of "goodness," and its surprising feature is that the Scottish spelling and pronunciation kept a sound English dropped. In Old English the word was "gōdnes," built from "gōd" (good) and the suffix "-nes," which made nouns of quality, as in "darkness" or "kindness." Through the Middle English period, the "d" in "goodness" was pronounced as a plain consonant, and the Scots dialect preserved a form with a vowel closer to "u," giving "guidness" alongside "gudeness" in older Scots texts. The spelling "guid" is a Scots development of the Old English vowel, and "guidness" survives mainly in Scots writing and in dialect speech, where it can carry the same senses as the standard word: moral virtue, kindness, or, in older usage, the goodness of a thing. Burns and other Scots writers used the "guid" spelling widely, which is why it is recognised today mostly as a literary and regional form rather than a separate word.