RICH AND EXPRESSIVE VOCABULARY
It is generally supposed that the vocabulary of dialect-speaking
people is very small; indeed, it has been stated as a scientific fact
that the common rustic uses scarcely more than 300 words. The most
cursory glance at the _English Dialect Dictionary_, however, will
suffice to convince anybody that this statement is incorrect. The
six volumes of this Dictionary contain in all over 5,000 pages, and
the number of simple and compound words in the first volume (A-C) is
17,519; and from the careful statistics given of the contents of this
volume, it may safely be inferred that the whole Dictionary contains
over 100,000 words.
As may be expected, we find in this vocabulary an immense variety of
terms or phrases for expressing one and the same idea. For instance,
there are approximately 1,350 words meaning to give a person a
thrashing, and an almost innumerable quantity meaning to die, and to get
drunk. There are some 1,300 ways of telling a person he is a fool. A few
names taken at random are: chuffin head, coof, gapus, gauvison,
goostrumnoodle, Jerry pattick, mee-maw, ning-nang, nornigig,
rockey-codlin, Sammy-suck-egg, snool, stooky, Tom-coddy, yawney,
yonnack. A fine cumulative effect is produced by a few introductory
adjectives, with or without a final pronoun, in such personal remarks
as: Thoo goffeny goavey, it’s thoo at’s daft Watty; You drumble-drone,
dunder-headed slinpole; Thah gert, gawmless, sackless, headed fooil
thah. There are about 1,050 terms for a slattern, such as: daffock,
dawps, drazzle-drozzle, flammakin, hagmahush, lirrox, mad Moll o’ the
woods, mawkin, moggy, rubbacrock, slammock or slommocks, trail-tengs,
trash-mire, wally-draigle.
[Sidenote: _Names for the Smallest Pig_]
Among animals possessing a large variety of names the smallest pig of
a litter holds a very prominent place with over 120 titles to
distinction, such as: Anthony-pig, cadme, Daniel, dilling (a very old
word for _darling_, occurring in Cotgrave’s _Dictionary_ and Burton’s
_Anatomy of Melancholy_), greck, little Josey, Nicholas, nisgal,
pedman, ritling, runt, squab, treseltrype, wrenock. That handsome
bird the hickwall, or green woodpecker, _Gecinus viridis_, figures
under almost every letter of the alphabet; whilst the sparrow and the
stickleback also rank high on the list. Among flowers, the ox-eye
daisy and the foxglove have the largest number of different names.
The foxglove is called: fairy fingers, fairy glove, fairy petticoats,
fairy thimbles, witches’ thimbles, bloody man’s fingers, dead man’s
bells, flop-a-dock, poppy-dock, pop-guns, &c., &c. One would fain find
in Thormantle, or Thor’s-mantle, a trace of ancient mythology, but the
most probable explanation of the term is that it is a corruption of
_tormentil_ from _Potentilla Tormentilla_, a flower which shares with
the foxglove the name Thor’s-mantle.
[Sidenote: _Names for a Brook_]
It would be an interesting experiment to try and trace out
geographically the use of the various words denoting a stream of water:
beck, burn, dike, sike, strype, water, &c., &c. The _New English
Dictionary_ tells us that _beck_ is ‘the ordinary name in those parts of
England from Lincolnshire to Cumberland which were occupied by the Danes
and Norwegians’. Another authority, Mr. Oliver Heslop, says: ‘This term,
which is found in Danish and Norwegian settlements in England, occurs
about sixty-three times in the county of Durham. In Northumberland it is
represented in the solitary case of the River Wansbeck, and in this it
is questionable whether the second syllable is originally beck,’ and
further: ‘The line dividing the more northern burn from the s.Dur. and
Yks. beck is a sharp one. It runs along the ridge between Wear and Tees
from Burnhope Seat eastwards to Paw Law Pike. The tributaries to the
Wear, on the _n._ side of this ridge, are burns, and the similar
affluents to the Tees, on its _s._ side, are becks.’ In Kettlethorpe
church, in Lincolnshire, is an epitaph on a former Rector of the parish,
the Rev. John Becke, who died in 1597:
I am a Becke, or river as you know,
And wat’red here yᵉ Church, yᵉ schole, yᵉ pore,
While God did make my springes here for to flow;
But now my fountain stopt, it runs no more.
_Beck_ is a Norse word, O.N. _bekkr_, a brook, occurring already in
Middle English, as, for instance, in Hampole’s _Psalter_, c. 1330: ‘Do
til thaim as till iabin in the bek of cyson,’ Ps. lxxxii. 8. _Burn_ is
an English word, O.E. _burna_, _burne_, a brook, and is found in Sc.
Irel. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Yks. Stf. _Sike_ is also a native word, O.E. _sīc_,
a watercourse, which comes down further south to Lei. and Nhp. _Strype_
is a purely Scotch name. Jamieson thus defines it: ‘A strype is
distinguished from a burn. The gradation seems to be: watter, a river;
burn, a brook; burnie, a small brook; strype, a rill of the smallest
kind.’ Though a _water_ means a river in Scotland, in England it more
usually denotes a smaller stream. The term is found in Dur. Yks. and
Lan., and is common in Som. and Dev. An amusing incident once occurred
at a Village Penny Reading entertainment where one of the songs on the
programme was the well-known ballad poem, _On the Banks of Allan Water_.
The pathetic notes of the last lines:
On the banks of Allan Water
There a corse lay she.
had hardly died away when the audience burst into a roar of laughter.
They had understood the climax to be some kind of practical joke played
by the miller’s daughter: ‘There o’ corse [of course] lay she!’
[Sidenote: _Names for a Girl_]
Attempts have been made to show the geographical distribution of the
words for girl, or young woman. Ellis states it roughly thus: ‘_mauther_
in Norfolk, _maid_ in the South, _wench_ in no bad sense in the
Midlands, and _lass_ generally in the North, _girl_,’ he adds, ‘is
rather an educated word.’ The word _mawther_ occurs in the _Promptorium
Parvulorum_ (circa 1440), the compiler of which was a Norfolk man. Sir
Thomas Browne (1605-82) mentions it as one of the words ‘of common use
in Norfolk, or peculiar to the East Angle countries’. It occurs in Ben
Jonson’s _Alchymist_, 1610; and Tusser, who was an Essex man, uses it
two or three times in his _Fiue Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie_,
1580:
No sooner a sowing, but out by and by,
with mother or boy that Alarum can cry:
And let them be armed with sling or with bowe,
to skare away piggen, the rooke and the crowe.
The word is used in Glo. Hrt. and Wil. besides East Anglia. At a trial
once in Norfolk the Judge inquired who could give evidence of what
had just been stated; the reply was: A mawther playing on a planchard
[a girl playing on the floor]. The Judge, not being a native, was
completely mystified. _Maid_ is the equivalent used in Dor. Som. Dev.
Cor. When a new baby arrives, the question as to its sex is always put
thus: Is it a boy or a maid? A similar use is found in the Bible, cp.
‘If she bear a maid child,’ _Leviticus_ xii. 5. In the sense of young
woman, or girl, the word _maid_ occurs frequently in the Authorized
Version of the Bible, whereas the word _girl_ only occurs twice; e.g.
‘The maid [Esther] was fair and beautiful,’ _Esther_ ii. 7; ‘Can a
maid forget her ornaments?’ _Jeremiah_ ii. 32. The daughter of Jairus,
aged twelve, is in St. Matthew ix. 24 ‘the maid’, though in St. Mark
she is ‘the damsel’. Wyclif termed her ‘the wenche’, a term which
occurs in the Authorized Version in 2 _Samuel_ xvii. 17, ‘And a wench
went and told them.’ In Yorkshire and Lancashire _wench_ is a term
of endearment; in Cheshire it is simply the feminine of _lad_; in
Oxfordshire they summon cows with the cry: Come, wench, come, wench; in
Gloucestershire the well-known rhyme runs:
A wickering [giggling] wench and a crowing hen,
Is neither good to God nor men.
It is to Gloucestershire also that belongs the story of the local
preacher who declaimed with terrific fervour: There you go, you chaps
and wenches, head over heels to hell, like zhip [sheep] drow a glat [a
gap in a hedge]. The North-country _lass_ may be of any age, though
commonly she is a young girl. The word is often used as a term of
address, e.g.
Owd lass, says I, tha’rt heigh i’ boan
An’ rayther low i’ beef.--_Natterin’ Nan._
[Sidenote: _The East Anglian Bor_]
One of the most comprehensive terms of familiar address is the East
Anglian _bor_, applied to persons of either sex and of all ages, e.g.
Hullo, bor! where be you a’goin? The plural is _together_, e.g. Well,
together, how are ye all? _Bor_ is an old native word, O.E. _būr_, which
we have in the literary language as the second element in _neighbour_.
How convenient it would be if we could adopt _bor_ into the upper
circles of the spoken language, for use at those awkward moments when,
after a lapse of years, we unexpectedly find ourselves face to face with
an old acquaintance, whose name has slipped from our memories. How
openly cordial we could be, and at the same time so comfortably
ambiguous: And is it really you, bor? How glad I am to see you again!
But if we were to attempt to lay a plundering hand on the dialects with
intent to enrich our standard speech by handy and convenient dialect
words, we should be embarrassed by the wealth before us. What literary
word, for instance, conveys the full meaning of the common dialect term
_feckless_ (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. War.), the lineal
descendant of Shakespeare’s _effectless_? It means: incapable,
incompetent, without resource, shiftless, helpless, and a great deal
more besides, all in a handy nutshell. There are scores of adjectives,
the forceful individuality of which we instinctively feel, and yet find
very hard to convey in the terms of a verbal definition. We are driven
to string together inadequate synonyms, or pile up pedantic phrases. _A
feckless body_ we define as: a person incapable of any effective effort;
_waughy_ (n.Cy.), we say, is used in illness, nearly always during
convalescence, to express the feebleness, shakiness, and
light-headedness after confinement to bed. It also means weak in body,
especially when accompanied by a tendency to faint, e.g. I felt that
waffy, I should hev siled doon upo’ th’floor, if missis hedn’t gen me
sum brandy. _Chuff_ (n.Cy. n.Midl. Midl.) is proud, pleased, denoting a
combination of fussiness and serene self-satisfaction. We certainly have
here much meaning in little room, as Dr. Johnson found in the word
_shrew_, which he defines as: ‘A peevish, malignant, clamorous,
spiteful, vexatious, turbulent woman.’
[Sidenote: _A gradely Lass_
_The Parson’s Pig_]
A few words such as _canny_, _dour_, _pawky_, have gained a recognized
position in the standard speech, through having been introduced by
educated Scotchmen. Some of the meanings of _canny_ are expressed in
the adjective _gradely_, a word generally quoted as characteristic of
the Lancashire dialect, in the phrase _a gradely lass_. It belongs,
however, also to Cum. Wm. Yks. Chs. Stf. Der. Shr. In origin it is
a form of _graithly_, a Scandinavian word, O.N. _greiðligr_, ready,
prompt, and it can mean: (1) respectable, honest, (2) handsome,
comely, (3) friendly, kind, (4) clever, (5) having full possession of
one’s senses, (6) genuine, good, (7) considerable, big. A similarly
compact word in general dialect use throughout Scotland and England
is _jannock_, or _jonnock_; like _gradely_, also of Scandinavian
origin, cp. Norw. dial. _jamn_, even, level, of which _jannock_ is
apparently a derivative form. The commonest meaning is fair, honest,
straight-forward: Yü may trist she. I tellee ’er’s jonnick tü tha
back-bone (Dev.). Another attractive adjective in general dialect
use is _peart_, a delightful word, which positively sounds: brisk,
lively, spirited, cheerful, in good health, sharp, and intelligent.
It has nothing to do with _pert_ either in form or meaning. It is
used specially of persons just recovered from an illness, e.g. Pretty
peart again now--but it may also be used of animals and plants. We
may remark: Them onions look peart, in contemplating the onion-bed.
A common proverbial saying in Cheshire is: Poor and peart like the
parson’s pig, whereby hangs a tale. The proverb is traced back to
the days when the parson had to take some at least of his tithe in
kind, when the pig reserved for him was wont to be a small and thin
one, and consequently specially brisk and active compared with the
pigs that went to market. More obvious similes are: as peart as a lop
[flea]; as peart as a pyet [magpie]; as peart as a cock-robin; and
with a figurative touch: as peart as a spoon. Closely connected with
the literary _uncouth_, is the widespread dialect adjective _unkid_.
It looks at first sight like the poor relation from the country, clad
in rough rustic garb, but as a matter of fact it is historically a
perfectly correct form, cp. M.E. _unkid_, not made known, _-kid_ =
O.E. _cȳðed_, p.p. of _cȳðan_, to make known. Indeed our _uncouth_ is
less regularly developed in pronunciation. _Unkid_ may be found in all
the dialects in England and Ireland, meaning: (1) strange, unusual;
(2) untidy, e.g. The missis took a dill a paayns uv our Becca, but ’er
couldna larn ’er to be tidy. ’Er sims reg’lar unkid, ’er do (Wor.); (3)
uncanny, horrid; (4) lonely, depressed; (5) cross, sulky; (6) stormy;
(7) of the weather: close, sultry. Some of the terms for describing
persons of sullen, ill-tempered, or peevish dispositions are worth
quoting: e.g. cappernishious, crumpsy, frabby, glumpy--If he’s glumpy,
let him glump--muggaty, perjinkety, snippety. To address a cantankerous
person engaged in a quarrelsome discussion as ‘You nasty brabagious
creature’ must give the speaker a pleasant sense of having said the
right thing at the right moment.
[Sidenote: _An ugsome Sair_]
Other very expressive adjectives are: _dowly_ (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm.
Yks. Lan. Lin.), lonely, melancholy; of places: retired, lonesome, e.g.
A desput dowly, deeathly spot t’won [live] in, an old word found in
Middle English, cp. ‘He fell to þe ground All dowly, for dole, in a dede
swone,’ _Destruction of Troy_, c. 1400; _gaumless_ (Yks. Nhb. Wm. Lan.),
stupid, senseless, vacant, ignorant, without judgment, e.g. Well, if I
ever did see annyb’dy so gaumless! Seems as if yo’d noo notion o’ nowt,
cp. O.N. _gaumr_, heed, attention; _perky_, sharp, saucy, impudent, e.g.
Sabina’s Bill is perkier then ony uther lad as I iver clapt eyes on; I
sent him wo’d he wasn’t to mislest that theäre maggit nest e’ my
plantin’, an’ I gets wo’d back fra him as he’d consither it, bud if I’d
send him sixpence he was sewer he wodn’t; _skiddley_ (Som.), small,
diminutive, used generally with little, to intensify or to add contempt,
e.g. Her ax me nif I’d like vor to take ort; an’ I zaid, thanky mum,
s’I; an’ then if her didn bring me out a little skiddley bit o’ bird’n
cheese, ’bout ’nough to put in a rabin’s eye; _ugsome_ (Sc. n.Cy.),
frightful, horrible, a derivative of O.N. _ugga_, to fear, e.g. a
ghastly wound is: an ugsome sair, and a savage bull may be said to have
‘leuk’t at us varry ugsomely’; _wairsh_ (Sc. Irel. n.Cy. Midl. Dev.),
tasteless, insipid, cp. ‘A kiss and a drink of water is but a wersh
disjune,’ Ramsay, _Proverbs_, 1737, and ‘werysshe as meate that is nat
well tastye, _mal savouré_’, Palsgrave, _Lesclarcissement de la langue
francoyse_, 1530; _wambly_ (Sc. Lan. Wil. Dev. Cor.), insecure,
unsteady.
[Sidenote: _T’onest Triuth_]
Some forceful adjectives have resulted from the simple addition of an
ordinary suffix to an ordinary standard English word, e.g. _dateless_
(Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Lin.), stupified, foolish, disordered in mind,
having the faculties failing through age, insensible, as from a blow,
literally, without a date, unconscious of time; _deedy_ (Sc. Yks. Midl.
Hmp. Sus. Wil. Dor.), full of activity, industrious, painstaking,
earnest, e.g. a deedy body, a practical person, an industrious worker.
It was once a literary word, cp. ‘In a messenger sent is required ...
that he be speedy, that he be heedy, and, as we say, that he be deedy,’
Adams, _Lycanthropy_, 1615; _eyeable_ (Chs. n.Midl. Midl. Cor.),
pleasing to the eye, sightly, as the man who was selling ready-made
clothes in the market said of his stock-in-trade: There’s a many things
that’s eyeable, but isn’t tryable, or buyable, but theäse things is
eyeable, an’ tryable, an’ buyable an’ all; _hurryful_ (Shr.), quick,
hasty, hurried, e.g. It inna the ’urriful sort o’ folk as bringen the
most to pass, for they runnen about athout thar yed ŏŏth ’em; _easyful_
(w.Yks. Shr.), _knowful_ (Yks.), _yonderly_ (Lakel. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs.),
are good, homely substitutes for indolent, well-informed,
absent-minded, literary adjectives, which by comparison with the
dialect ones sound prosaic and harsh. Indeed, _yonderly_ in particular,
when applied to persons, is an untranslatable epithet, and yet one which
exactly describes certain types of mind. It can also convey a sense of
the pathetic, e.g.
Then Nan lewkt at ma wi a lewk
Soa yonderly an’ sad.--_Natterin’ Nan._
_Yonderish_ (Yks. Lan.), on the other hand, is not a friendly and gentle
term, it can be even abusive, when used in speaking to persons who think
themselves superior to other people, e.g. Theaw needsno’ be so
yonderish, theaw’rt nowt ’at’s owt [thou art nothing that is anything].
Very expressive too are some of the participial adjectives, such as:
_gaustering_ (Chs. War. Yks. Lan. Lei. Lin.), blustering, bumptious,
e.g. Sike a braungin’, gausterin’ taistrill [such a swaggering,
bumptious, good-for-nothing rascal]; _snazzling_ (Yks. of the wind or
weather), cold, biting, bleak; to lead a _threppoing, pungowing_ life
(Chs.) means the sort of life where it is hard to make both ends meet,
when one is puzzled how to get on, a hand to mouth sort of existence;
all _cottered_ into snocksnarls signifies in an entangled heap; a
_oondermoinded_ nassty trick is a nicely explicit phrase; so is the
sentence: I was so _cumpuffled_ I didn’t know what I was about;
_throssan-_, or _thrussen-up_ (Lakel. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan.)--literally,
thrust-up--means conceited, forward. A Yorkshire woman, when on a visit
to her son in the South, was asked by a lady in rather a patronizing
manner, what she thought of South-country ladies. She replied: Wah, to
tel ye t’onist triuth, the’r nowt bud stuk-up thrussen-up things wi’
nowt mich abaht ’em, the’r all ahtside.
[Sidenote: _Natterin’ Nan_]
It is not easy to make a typical selection of what may be called
expressive words, partly because the choice is so very wide, and partly
because one is apt to exaggerate the merits of words which appeal
to one personally, and so one is not an impartial judge. There are
certain quaint dialect words which bring back to one’s mind the days
of one’s childhood, the old family nurse, or the gardener who reigned
supreme in the garden of long ago, and so for old sake’s sake these
words express more than meets the ear of a stranger. Here, however,
is a sample of verbs of various kinds: _brevit_ (gen. use in Midl.
counties), to search, ransack, &c., as in the following account of
a visit to the dentist: Soo the doctor, a lukes at my tooth a bit,
an’ begins a-brevetin’ abaout among his bench o’ tules, an’ a says,
tell ye what Joo, a says, yo’ mut grin an’ aboide this turn. Soo ah
says, ah cain’t grin if ye doon’t lave me noo tooshes, ah says. Soo a
says, Ah, but yo’ can Joo, a says, yo’ can grin o’ the wrong soide;
_cabobble_ (e.An. Cor.), to mystify, puzzle, confuse, e.g. You wholly
cabobble me; _chunner_ (Sc. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. War. Shr.), to grumble,
mutter, murmur. A clergyman, asking an infirm old woman how she was,
received as an answer: I goes on chunner, chunner, chunner. Whereupon
he proceeded to give her a homily showing how wrong it was to be
discontented, when he was stopped by the old woman: Bless you, Parson,
it’s not me that chunners, it’s my innards! _Fratch_ (n.counties),
to quarrel, dispute, as for example, when a loud noise of wrangling
voices is heard, some one may suggest that it is two women fratching,
or forty men fighting; _glox_ (Hmp. Wil.), of liquids: to roll about,
make a gurgling sound when shaken inside a vessel; _goggaz_ (Chs.), to
stare, e.g. What a’t tha goggazin’ at naï? Tha’s noo moor manners abaït
thee till if tha’d bin born in a wood; _guggle_ (various dialects),
to gurgle, make a bubbling sound, which looks at first sight like a
made-up word, but which was known to Cotgrave, and to Dr. Johnson,
who has: ‘To _Guggle_. v.n. [_gorgoliare_, Italian] To sound as water
running with intermissions out of a narrow mouthed vessel’; _gnatter_,
_natter_ (Sc. and n.counties), to grumble, complain, fret, e.g.
_Natterin’ Nan_, which is the title of the most famous of Ben Preston’s
dialect poems:
Bud t’wahst o’ fouts [faults] at I’ve seen yet,
I’ woman or i’ man,
Is t’weary, naagin’, nengin’ turn
At plaaged puir natterin’ Nan.
[Sidenote: _A local Dick_]
Cp. E. Fris. _gnattern_, murren, verdriesslich sein; _knacker_ (Glo.),
of the teeth: to chatter. A local preacher--such as is termed in
Yorkshire ‘a local Dick’--was once preaching a sermon on the Last Day,
in which he foretold the end of the sinners present in chapel: Every
limb of your bodies will shake like the leaves of an aspen tree, and
your teeth will knacker in your heads like frost-bitten mariners.
_Maffle_, _moffle_ (Chs. Nhp.), to spend recklessly, squander, waste
in trifles. In the accounts of a certain parish, where all the money
could not be accounted for, appeared this item: ‘To moffled away £40.’
_Maunder_ (gen. dial.), to talk idly and incoherently, to mumble;
_mopple_ (Yks.), to confuse, puzzle. At a cottage prayer-meeting a
Minister was, as it is called, ‘engaged’ in prayer, when he became
annoyed by one of those present, who continually broke in with
ejaculations such as: Glory! Amen! Yus! &c. Suddenly the Minister
stopped, tapped the disturber on the shoulder and said: Drop it, mun,
tha mopples me. _Moither_ (gen. dial.), to confuse, perplex, bewilder,
e.g. A wur that moithered, a didn’ knoo wheer a was to a wik [week].
Mary Lamb’s grandmother used to say to her: ‘Polly, what are those poor
crazy moythered brains of yours thinking of always?’ C. Lamb’s letter
to Coleridge, Oct. 17, 1796. _Nivel_ (Glo. Oxf.), to sneer, turn up the
nose in disdain. A small boy in a Sunday School class, reading about
David and Goliath, was asked what was meant by ‘disdained’ in ‘when
the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him’. Ans. He
nivelled at un. Cp. Fr. Norm. dial. _nifler_, flairer avec bruit, en
parlant d’un chien. _Scrawk_ (Yks. Not. Lin. Nhp.), to scratch, mark,
e.g. M’m, me scrawk th’ paaintins [painted woodwork of a room] M’m! I
know my wark better; _scrouge_ (var. dial.), to squeeze, press, crowd,
e.g. Now dwoan’t ’ee come a scrougin’ on I zo; _scrunge_ (n.Cy. Nhb.
Stf. Glo. Oxf. Hmp. I.W. Wil.), with the same meanings as _scrouge_,
e.g. We were that scrunged, we couldn’t move; _thrutch_ (Yks. Lan. Chs.
Der.), to crowd, squeeze, huddle together, O.E. _þryccan_, to press,
push. A proverbial saying applied to any one who has a great deal to
say about the conduct or characters of other people and is not above
suspicion himself, runs: Where there’s leeost reawm, there’s moast
thrutchin’. But the classical illustration of the use of this word
comes in the story of Noah and the ancestor of the Lancashire folk.
This gentleman was swimming about in the Flood, and meeting the Ark,
he called out to Noah to take him aboard, which the latter declined to
do, on the grounds of lack of space, adding by way of apology: We’re
thrutched up wi’ elephants. _Trapes_ (gen. dial.), to trudge, go on
foot, walk heavily or wearily, &c. An old woman on her death-bed was
asked to take a message to a previously deceased person, when she
retorted sharply: Di ya think ah sall he’ nowt ti deeah i’ heaven bud
gan trapsin’ aboot, latin’ [searching] for hor? _Yammer_ (Sc. Irel.
Nhb. Lakel. Yks. Lan. Lin. War.), to lament, cry aloud fretfully, O.E.
_gēomrian_, to mourn, complain.
[Sidenote: _All of a Goggle_]
A good descriptive word, which might well be adopted into the
standard speech, is _fantigue_ (gen. dial.). To be in _a fine
fantigue_ is to be in a state of fussy excitement, or a fit of ill
temper, usually without sufficient cause. Similarly, to be _all in a
confloption_ (e.An. Cor.) well conveys the idea of flurry, confusion;
to be _all in a scrow_ (n.Cy.) is specially used of that annually
recurrent state of domestic disorder known as spring-cleaning; to be
_all of a goggle_ (Glo. Hmp. I.W. Wil.) is to be trembling and shaking
all over; to be _all of a jother_ (Yks.) is a parallel phrase. A stout
old woman describing her first experience of a railway journey, said:
Ah’ll niver gan in yan o’ thae nasty vans nae mair. Ah trimmel’d and
dither’d while [until] ah wur all iv a jother. _All of a quob_ (Wil.
Cor.) means in a heap. A Cornish woman describing the way railway
porters take luggage out of a train said: They pitch it down all of
a quob. A preacher in a Lincolnshire chapel gave out as his text,
‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh.’ Just then a newly married couple
walked in, and the strangeness of the coincidence so upset the orator,
that he exclaimed: Mi brethren, I’m clean blutterbunged. To be _in a
wassle_ (Glo.) is to find oneself in a muddle, or fix, as the preacher
said when he got lost in his discourse: My friends, you must excuse
me, and sing a hymn, for I am in a regular wassle. To be gone _all to
skubmaw_ is to be in a state of wreckage, broken in pieces. A Cornish
minister is reported to have prayed: Lord! send down Thy mighty armour
from above, and scat all our stony hearts to skoobmah.
[Sidenote: _Appropriate-sounding Words_]
Then there are numerous appropriate-sounding terms such as: _fiz-gig_
(Yks. Der. Not. Lin. Nhp. War. I.W.), a disrespectful term for a girl or
woman fond of gadding about, cp. ‘_Trotière_, a raump, fisgig, fisking
huswife,’ Cotgr.; _pelrollock_ (Shr.), an ill-dressed, worn-out looking
woman; _scallibrat_ (Yks.), a passionate, noisy child, a young vixen;
_sledderkin_ (Cum.), a sauntering, slovenly person; _snapperdol_ (Lan.),
a gaily dressed woman. A simple onomatopoeic word for palpitation of the
heart is _glopping_ (Lei.); such too is _pash_ (n.counties), for a
downpour of rain, e.g. Hout, tout! What’s the gude of praying for
moderate rain and shooers? What we want is a gude even-doon pash! But
the name of this type of word is legion, and to illustrate it at all
adequately would require the scope of a dictionary.
[Sidenote: _Homespun Compounds_]
In the days of King Alfred, and of Ælfric, the Abbot of Eynsham,
literary English possessed numbers of good, home-grown, compound words,
which have since been lost, and replaced by some more learned or diffuse
substitute. People said then: _book-craft_ for literature; _star-craft_
for astronomy; _father-slayer_ for parricide; _deed-beginner_ for
perpetrator of crime; _together-speech_ for colloquy; _old-speech_ for
tradition; _well-willing_ for benevolent, O.E. _bōc-cræft_,
_tungol-cræft_, _fæder-slaga_, _dǣd-fruma_, _samod-sprǣc_,
_eald-sprǣc_, _welt-willende_. Sometimes again we have replaced the old
compound by a more concise but less picturesque synonym. For
_lore-house_ we say school; for _dim-house_, prison; for _again-coming_,
return, O.E. _lār-hūs_, _dim-hūs_, _eft-cyme_. In the spoken dialects we
have the natural development of a living tongue, practically untouched
by what are called the learned influences; hence, where in the literary
language we should use a word of Latin origin, we frequently find a
homespun compound used by dialect-speakers. We shall see in a later
chapter to what a large extent these compounds are figurative and
metaphorical; the few here quoted belong only to the simplest type:
_beet-need_ (n.Cy. Yks. Lan.), a person or thing that helps in an
emergency, cp. O.E. _bētan_, to improve; _cap-river_, a termagant;
_cover-slut_ (Lei. Nhp. War. Shr.), a long apron used to hide an untidy
dress; _has-been_ (Sc. n.Cy. Lakel. Yks. Chs. Lin. War. Shr.), a person,
animal, or thing, formerly serviceable but now past its prime, as the
old Lincolnshire man said: It stan’s to reason at yung college-gentlemen
like you knaws a vast sight moore then a worn-oot hes-been like me, bud
you weänt better God Almighty an’ ten commandments e’ my time, an’ soä
I’ll just stick to ’em while I’m happ’d up [till I am buried];
_he-said_, or _he-say_ (Wm. w.Yks.), a rumour; _never-sweat_ (Yks. Rdn.
Oxf.), an idle lazy fellow; _rip-stitch_ (Lakel. Yks. Lan.), a romping
boisterous child, e.g. What a rip-stitch that lad is! If aw send him out
i’ th’mornin’ wi’ his things o’ reet an’ tidy, he’ll come back at neet
like a scarecrow; _rogues-agreed_ (Som.), confederates, e.g. They
purtend avore the justices how they ’adn never a-zeed wan t’other avore,
but lor! anybody could zee they was rogues-agreed; _good-doing_ (e.An.),
charitable; _penny-tight_ (Lin.), short of money; _uptake_ (Sc. n.Cy.
Nhb. Cum.), intelligence, comprehension, generally in the phrase _in_ or
_at the uptake_, e.g. He’s gleg i’ the uptak [quick in understanding].
[Sidenote: _Some fine shades of Meaning_]
Fine shades of meaning are often expressed in the dialects by some
slight variation in pronunciation which to our ears might sound purely
arbitrary or accidental, and also by the distinctive use of one or other
of two words which from a dictionary point of view are synonymous. For
example, _drodge_ and _drudge_ both mean a person who works hard, but
the difference is this: a _drudge_ is always kept working by a superior,
a _drodge_ is always working because she cannot get forward with her
work; the word _drodge_ implies blame, and _drudge_ none. _Geeble_ (_g_
soft), _gibble_ (_g_ soft), _jabble_ (Bnff.), signify a quantity of
liquid. The word _geeble_ contains the notion of contempt and
dissatisfaction. When there is a small quantity and greater contempt and
dissatisfaction indicated, _gibble_ is used, and when a larger quantity,
_jabble_ is used. _Muxy_ and _puxy_ (Som.) mean miry, but a _muxy_ lane
would be merely a muddy lane, whereas a _puxy_ lane would be at least
ankle-deep in mud; _steal_ and _slance_ (Lan. Chs.) mean thieve. A boy
may take a piece of pie from his mother’s larder, and he will have
_slanst_ it, but if he did the same thing from his neighbour’s place he
would have _stolen_ it. Words like this would never be confused by
people accustomed to use them in everyday life.