Wantroost

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A Scots term for a lack of confidence in someone or something, a feeling that a person or thing cannot be relied upon
2. Distrust or suspicion in another person, especially the doubting of a person's honesty or reliability in Scottish usage
3. Mistrust, a state of doubting that another can be relied on, as recorded in older Scots writing and dialect

Etymology: Distrust in old Scots had a name built from a verb of lacking: "wantroost," which joins "want" in its older sense of "to be without" to "troost," the Scots form of "trust." The compound describes the state of having no trust in someone or something, and it survived in Scots and northern English dialect long after standard English had moved on. The second element comes from Old Norse "traust," meaning confidence or protection, which entered Scots and northern English as "trust" and developed the "troost" spelling there. "Want" in the first element comes from Old Norse "vanta," which carried the same sense of lacking. Compounds like this, with a negative prefix or noun before a positive one, were a productive pattern in northern English dialects, though the exact date when this particular formation first appeared is uncertain.