a. Sc. Also 6 camschow, -scho, 7 -schoche, 8 campsho, 8–9 camsheugh, 9 -shach. [The first part is evidently CAM a. ‘crooked, perverse’; the second perh. represents OE. sceoh ‘askew, perverse,’ of which schoch would be the normal Scotch form: Jamieson has also the Sc. verbs sheuch, shach to distort, and shachle, shochle to distort, wriggle.]
1. Crooked, distorted, awry; deformed.
1513. Douglas, Æneis, III. x. 43. Thai elriche brethir … with mony camscho beik, And hedis semand to the hevin areik. Ibid., VII. Prol. 107. Laithlie of forme, wyth crukit camschow beik.
a. 1600. Montgomerie, Flyting, 295. That cruiked, camschoche croyll, vncristned, they curse.
1730. Ramsay, Twa Cats & Ch., 13. A monkey with a campsho face.
1807–10. Tannahill, Poems (1846), 21. Auld, swirlon, slaethorn, camsheugh, crooked Wight.
2. fig. Perverse (in disposition or fortune).
1606. Birnie, Kirk-Burial (1833), 36. The camshoch commons now at last coms in a rere warde to debate the cause.
1787. W. Taylor, Scots Poems, 170 (Jam.). Bot camshach wife or girnin gett.
1790. A. Wilson, To E. Picken. The queer carles sae camsheugh spak’.
a. 1809. Christmas Ba’ing, in Skinner, Misc. Poet., 129 (Jam.). Pate had caught a camshach cair At this uncanny wark.
