Chiefly Sc. Also sowback. [f. SOW sb.1 Cf. sow’s-back s.v. SOW sb.1 8 d.]
1. A woman’s cap or head-dress having a raised ridge or fold running from front to back.
1808. Jamieson, Frowdie, a cap for the head;… also called a sow-back.
1835. Monteath, Dunblane (1887), 113. Auld Wives o’ Dunblane … Wi’ their cloaks an’ their sowbacks.
1886. S. Carment, Mem. J. Carment, iii. 79. The aged women with their white soo-backs.
attrib. 1897. J. Wright, Sc. Life, 18. Attired in a white ‘sooback mutch’ and in short-gown and drugget coat.
2. Geol. A ridge of glacial origin suggestive of the back of a sow.
1874. J. Geikie, Gt. Ice Age, ii. 17. The long parallel ridges, or ‘sowbacks’ and ‘drums,’ as they are termed,… invariably coincide in direction with the valleys or straths in which they lie. Ibid., vii. 97. ‘Sowbacks’ being the glacial counterparts of those broad banks of silt and sand that form here and there upon the beds of rivers.
