The excellent word stim has been relegated to dialect status in many dictionaries. It is in general use here, and is the subject of a question from Brendan Redmond of Portmarnock, who tells me that a Sligo friend pronounces the word styme.
Styme, often written stime, is found in Scotland as well as stim; the word is also common in England's North Country. It means, of course, the faintest form of any object; a glimpse or gleam of light. "I scarce could wink to see a styme," wrote Burns in There's Naethin Like the Honest Nappy, which is a paean to ale, not to motherhood. "The night was dark . . . you could not see a stim," wrote our own Lever in Charles O'Malley.
Not far from Glenties in Co Donegal I once heard an old woman speak of a look or glance, particularly a furtive glance, as a styme. In an 1829 Scottish songbook I once bought for half a crown, there is the same shade of meaning: "I see him in aside the bink (bench),/I gae him bread and ale to drink,/ And ne'er a blythe styme wad he blink . . ."
In Scotland, too, the adjective stimey means dim-sighted; there is also a noun stimey which means one who is clumsy because of impaired eyesight. Hence the golfing term stymie, the predicament in which a player was placed when he found his opponent's ball lay in the line of his putt. The wicked stymie rule, if revived, would make professional tournament golf interesting once more, and might even take the smile off the face of the Tiger. Anyway, stime/styme, is from the Icelandic skima, a gleam of light.
Don Urwin, who lives in Rhue, Tubbercurry, Co Sligo, asks about the word femma, used by his family, which came from Newcastle upon Tyne, when describing anything fragile.
Femma and Femmer are general in England's North Country; the English Dialect Dictionary defines the word as "weak, frail, slender, slightly made, cranky, used of both persons and things". In Yorkshire it has the added meaning, effeminate. The word has changed a bit in meaning since its adaptation from the Old Norse, fimr, nimble.
A doit is a careless youngster, Jane McBride from Bangor, Co Down, tells me. The Ballymena Observer (1892), a book, not a newspaper, has this defined as "a heedless youngster who would perhaps mismanage a message". It is from the Middle Dutch dote, folly, weakness of mind.