Hunger Emout
Hunger Emout # KTT S NO294062 2
? Hungerabaid 1753 Roy sheet 18, 1 [or Hungerabout (reading in PNF 2, 277); it could also be read as Hungirabaut]
Hunger emout 1775 Ainslie/Fife
Sc hunger + Sc them + Sc out
‘Hunger them out’, containing a Sc verbal phrase meaning ‘starve them out’ (for hunger as a transitive verb, see DOST under hunger, hungir). This is based on the Ainslie (1775) form of the name. Humorously self-deprecating, it refers either to the poverty of the land or to the fact that the holding was not big enough to support its inhabitants. It belongs to a well-defined genre of early modern Scots place-names containing a verbal construction, usually humorous, for more of which see Taylor 2008. Besides this form of the name, which contains the third person plural pronoun, there are in Fife two with the third person m. singular, namely Hungerhimout #, one in Kirkcaldy (now Hayfield KDT), the other in Largo parish LAR.
There are problems with Roy’s form. It may contain the Sc noun abade, abaid ‘abode’. If so, hunger is being used as a noun.
This place-name appeared in printed volume 2