I love the intricate plots of the Vera Stanhope novels by Ann Cleeves. As for vocabulary building through reading, I especially find it fascinating the different spellings of words by British or Scottish writers versus American writers. I like the added u in words like colour, neighbour, or favour. I’ve read the Vera books and loved each of them, but I have to confess to catching Vera first on BritBox TV. The series is well done, highlights the scenic beauty of Northumberland in North East England on the border of Scotland, and it’s cast with a perfect choice of Brenda Bletha to play this cantankerous detective.

In this blog I offer a different type of book review­—one that’s combined with vocabulary building. The first Cleeves novel featuring Vera is The Crow Trap. I found a couple of interesting Scottish/English terms in it that I’ll highlight here.

From The Crow Trap:

“No, Jan’s taken the bairn to visit his grandma. They’ll not be back until after the weekend.”

bairn, noun, Scottish English Northern England: a child — Origin, old English bearn, of Germanic origin; related to the verb bear.

From The Crow Trap:

It would be easy for walking but not, she suspected, very interesting for birds. The other was a piece of heather moorland, managed for grouse.

moor, noun: an uncultivated upland, a heath / a tract of land preserved for shooting— Origin, old English mor of Germanic origin

moorland, noun, also moorlands, mainly British English: an extensive area of moor

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 Definitions are typically from the dictionary that comes with my Mac or The New Oxford American Dictionary.

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To connect or learn more about Ann Cleeves, find him at anncleeves.com

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“The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft