illify (verb)
Cumberland, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, Westmorland, Yorkshire
To slander. From Yorkshire: ‘Thare they ar, illifyin’ an’ backbitin ivery boddy’. It’s an adaptation of standard English vilify, from vile. A small family of related words emerged: an illifier was a slanderer; and if you were illified you were, in an extension of the meaning, scandalized.
ireful (adjective)
Yorkshire
Angry, stormy, inflamed. A wound was said to ‘look varry ireful’, as were dark gathering clouds. Ire, from Latin ira ‘anger’, became poetic in standard English, but remained an everyday word in several dialects.
izzard (noun)
Cheshire, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Durham, Gloucestershire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Scotland, Suffolk, Wiltshire, Yorkshire
An old name for the letter z. It was widely used in dialects, and travelled to Virginia, where ‘from A to izzard’ is recorded with the meaning ‘from beginning to end’. British developments included izzardly, ‘to the last degree’. From Gloucestershire: ‘The bull frightened him most izedly’. If you were ‘as crooked as an izzard’ you had a perverse disposition.