Word.ws English Dictionary

bauchle

bauchle verb: to misuse, to bungle.

Verb

bauchle (third-person singular simple present bauchles, present participle bauchling, simple past and past participle bauchled)

  1. (Scotland) To misuse, to bungle.
    • Our enemies were disputing not far off upon the deck, and that so loudly that I could hear a word or two above the washing of the seas. “It was Shuan bauchled it,” I heard one say.1886, Robert Louis Stephenson, Kidnapped
    • Maybe that shot that ye think ye bauchled was the most providential shot ye ever fired...1925, John Buchan, John Macnab
  2. (Scotland) To insult, to upbraid, to make a fool of someone.
    • An echo of "bauchling" lingered on, it seemed to me, in Cumbrian rural police courts until a few years ago. Nowhere else, as a court reporter, have I heard so much abusive interruption and blasphemous invocation from the public benches during the hearing of cases. Cumbrian magistrates dealt with it...1972, George MacDonald Fraser, The Steel Bonnets, page 152

Noun

bauchle (plural bauchles)

  1. (Scotland, in plural) An old shoe.
    • We a' ken that there's tongues in heads, but I ne'er heard o' ony in hats or bauchles afore.1842, Laird of Logan, Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, issue 481, page 104.
  2. (Scotland) A fool.
    • He adds, probably his letter would be propaled and made a bauchle of, and assures them he was never loved at Court as a minister.1843, Robert Woodrow, The life of Mister Robert Bruce, Minister at Edinburgh, page 92
  3. (Scotland) A bungled or muddled situation; a mess.

Forms of bauchle

Verb
third-person singular presentbauchles
present participlebauchling
past participlebauchled
pastbauchled
Noun
pluralbauchles

Origin of bauchle

From Scots, probably related to Old French bafouer (“to hoodwink”).

Questions about bauchle

What does bauchle mean?
Bauchle means to misuse, to bungle.
What part of speech is bauchle?
Bauchle can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of bauchle?
The past tense of bauchle is bauchled.

Words near bauchle in the dictionary

  1. baubon
  2. baubons
  3. baucan
  4. baucans
  5. Bauchi
  6. bauchle
  7. bauchled
  8. bauchles
  9. bauchling
  10. Baucke
  11. Bauckes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bauchle (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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