A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter G

Glaikit

Dialect
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Foolish, stupid, or vacant in expression; showing a lack of sense or awareness.

Detailed Definition
"Glaikit" is a wonderfully expressive word for a particular kind of foolishness, the slack-jawed, unfocused vacancy of someone who has not paid attention or cannot quite grasp what is happening. It appears in Scots comic verse to deflate pretension or describe comic characters, and its hard consonants and open vowel perfectly mimic the expression it names. In poetry it is both a comic tool and a social observation, part of the long Scots tradition of plain-speaking about human folly.
Example
Example in poetry:
"Glaikit" means stupid, foolish, or vacant-looking; Burns uses related terms of satirical description; A poet might write: "The glaikit lad stood wi' his moo agape / as if the world had taken alien shape." for comic characterisation; "Dinnae stand there glaikit in the rain — / a wet fool learns nothing frae the pain." offers blunt advice; "She wore a glaikit smile that day, / but wisdom came tae her in May." redeems apparent foolishness; "Even the glaikit find their way — / the sun shines on the dull as gay." offers democratic compassion; "He looked glaikit tae the town, / but thought deep thoughts behind his frown." subverts surface impression
Additional Notes
Glaikit is a word with strong comic potential, describing the particularly human condition of appearing blank and foolish — the vacant expression, the slow comprehension, the sense that the lights are on but nobody is home. It is not usually a term of genuine contempt but of affectionate mockery, the kind of teasing that communities visit on their own members. In drama and comic verse it is especially useful for characterisation. Students should note that "glaikit" implies not malice but emptiness — the glaikit person is not wicked, just bewilderingly obtuse. Compare with "gomeril" (fool), "gomph" (simpleton), and "doitit" (confused) for related terms on the Scots spectrum of foolishness.
Also Known As
Foolish Silly Gormless
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