v. dial. [? a. Du. stuiten to rebound, bounce (? adopted as a term of some ball-game). But cf. STOT v. in similar senses.]
1. Sc. a. intr. ‘To rebound, bounce’ (Eng. Dial. Dict.). b. To move unsteadily, stumble, lurch; to walk with unsteady movements. Also with about, along.
1719. W. Hamilton, Ep. Ramsay, ii. 62. Wi’ writing I’m sae bliert and doited, That when I raise, in troth I stoited.
1787. Burns, To Miss Ferrier, iii. Last day my mind was in a bog, Down George’s Street I stoited. Ibid. (1794), ‘Contented wi’ little,’ iv. Blind Chance, let her snapper and stoyte on her way.
1818. Scott, Hrt. Midl., xxx. I wish ye had seen him stoiting about, aff ae leg on to the other, wi’ a kind o’ dot-and-go-one sort o’ motion.
1864. Latto, Tammas Bodkin, xii. 114. We were stoitin’ alang, deeply immersed in oor ain cracks.
2. Of pilchards: To leap above the surface of the water.
1825. Encycl. Lond., XX. 435/1. They call the jumping of the fish stoiting.
1836. Yarrell, Brit. Fishes, II. 101. The Herring … rarely springs from the water, or stoits, as it is called.
1899. Baring-Gould, Bk. of West, II. xix. 315. The sean-boat is rowed in a circular course round where the fish are stoiting.
Hence Stoit sb., a lurch. Phr. to play stoit, to lurch or stagger.
1808. A. Scott, Poems, 164. But fegs, wi’ mony a stoit an’ stevel, She [sc. a filly] rais’d a trot.
1881. D. Thomson, Musings among Heather, 118. Rab’s road seem’d shorter than ’twas wide, For he play’d stoit frae side to side.
