Sperran

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A pouch worn hanging from a belt at the front of a kilt, traditionally in Highland dress
2. A purse-like bag suspended from the waist in front of the kilt as part of Scottish Highland costume
3. A furry or leather pouch fastened at the waist over the kilt, used to carry small personal items

Etymology: Old English speakers used "sperran" for the bar or bolt that held a door or gate shut, and the same idea sits at the heart of its family. The verb form meant to bar, shut, or fasten something, and the noun grew out of that action: the thing that does the barring. Its close relatives in modern German and Dutch, "sperren" and "sperren", still mean to block, lock, or close off, so a bolted gate and a closed road share one ancient image. The word is Germanic, not Latin, and it passed into the wider English vocabulary of barriers and fastenings long before the Norman Conquest. Most of its later life took place in regional and dialect speech rather than in standard written English, which is why it can look unfamiliar today. Its basic sense of shutting something in or out has survived in its cognates, even where the English form has faded.