Re: Fr/lat/ru tu-vous/tu-vos/ - : etymology ?

"Scottish och aye" is extremely recent. It's an expression of
exasperated agreement. The "och" part is older, with multiple
origin: a contraction of Gaelic "ochone" or a variant of English
"oh" (it has NEVER pronounced with the "ch" sounding like "k").
"Aye" meaning "yes" is a 19th century import from English; it
first appears in English at the end of the 16th century and not
in Scots until much later, though it is now so well established
you'd think it had been around for a millennium.
Thanks for the informative reply. I take it Scottish och is close
to German Ach and Ah,

No. As I said it comes from either or both of Gaelic "ochone"
and English "oh". English "oh", according to the OED, comes
from Latin and has no cognate in OHG.


The Magdalenian word for the left eye would have been AY
which gave rise to the exlamations ei! ay!

The "aye" in "och aye" is not an exclamation. It just means "yes".
The expression as a whole is more or less an *anti*exclamation -
"yes, unfortunately", "yes, if you really insist". And since there
is no trace of "aye" before the sixteenth century, with no recorded
antecedent in any language, you've got a few thousand years of the
story missing.

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