a. Sc. Forms: 4–5 thowles, 5 -lace, -las, -lys, thoulass, 8– thowless. [app. a collateral Sc. form of THEWLESS, with which it agrees in sense; but the phonology is unexplained.]
† 1. Without morality or virtue; wanton, dissolute, profligate; also, thoughtless. Obs.
1375. [implied in THOWLESSNESS].
c. 1425. Wyntoun, Cron., VIII. xxii. 3292 (MS. Cott.). He was thowlace [v.r. wantoun], and had in won,… oftsyis to ly Oþir syndry women by. Ibid., xxxiii. 5933. Weil waxyn vp … And thowles þan, for his ȝoutheide To þat natur walde hym leide.
14[?]. How the Good wife, etc., 260, in Barbour’s Bruce, 534. And chasty thame quhen thai do myss, Or [MS. our] rekles thoulass wantoun is.
a. 1500. Ratis Raving, I. 1264. This eild is thowles & wnswere, And ȝarnis play, and al blytht chere.
a. 1500. Thewis Gd. Women, 145, in Ratis Raving, etc., 107. Women that has a thowlas hart.
2. Devoid of energy or spirit; inert, inactive; spiritless, listless.
1721. Ramsay, Prospect of Plenty, 128. A poor and haughty drone, Wha thowless stands a lazy looker-on. Ibid. (1728), Tea-t. Misc., Widow, vi. Fortune … ruins the woer that’s thowless and cauld.
1801. Macneill, Poems (1844), 111. Thowless, he tint his gate deep ’mang the snaw.
1818. Scott, Br. Lamm., xii[i]. You, ye thowless jade, to sit still and see my substance disponed upon to an idle, drunken, reprobate, worm-eaten serving man.
a. 1875. J. Murray, in Mod. Scot. Poets (1881), III. 150. The kye stand thowless on the croft.
Hence Thowlessness, † evil or immoral conduct, bad behavior; wantonness, vice (obs.); also, want of energy, ineffectiveness.
1375. Barbour, Bruce, I. 333. And till swylk thowlesnes he ȝeid, As the courss askis off ȝowtheid.
c. 1425. Wyntoun, Cron., VI. iii. 268. That thai suld noucht for ydilnes Fall intill iwill thowlysnes.
1885. ‘J. Strathesk,’ More Bits, xi. (ed. 2), 206. She did not quite like some of Bell’s remarks about ‘wasterfu’ness’ and ‘thowlessness,’ possibly because they were only too true.
