oamly or owmly (adjective)
Yorkshire
Unpleasant or hurtful to the feelings; lonely, dismal, dreary. The word comes from Old Norse omli, ‘poor, wretched, miserable’. It would have been important not to mix this up with the identical-sounding homely, pronounced with a dropped h.
obsteer (adjective)
Lincolnshire
Stubborn, sulky, awkward. ‘Charlie’s a real obsteer man, bud he’s noht so bad as his faather ewsed to be’. The word is a blend of austere and obstinate. The ob- element was widely used in dialects, as seen in Berkshire obfusticated (‘confused’), Yorkshire obstracklous (‘obstreperous’), and a general use of obstropolous (again, for ‘obstreperous’) in dialects in many parts of the English-speaking world.
oddlin or oddling (noun)
Cheshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire
Any person or thing standing alone, seen as differing from others; the last remaining member(s) of a family or community. From Yorkshire: ‘Apples is ommost deean [almost down], bud Ah think we’ve a few oddlins left’. From Leicestershire, of a solitary house remote from others: ‘They live at an oddlins’. In Cheshire, an eccentric person was described as ‘one o’ God’s oddlins’.
odocity or docity (noun)
Rutland
Ability, spirit, energy. ‘I seems as if I hadn’t the odocity to work or to eat or anything’. Docity, sometimes written as dacity, was much more widely used in dialects throughout the Midlands and the South of England, and travelled to America. The source is audacity, with the opening unstressed syllable dropped, as often happened in dialect usage (and in colloquial standard English too, as when banana is pronounced as nana).
onfeel see unfeel
onshooty (adjective)
Shropshire
Of vegetables: coming up irregularly in the rows. ‘How are your turnips coming on?’ a man is asked: ‘Well, they bin mighty onshooty; they’n missed five or six butts [ridges between furrows] together’.
oob (verb)
Shetland Isles
To howl, moan, wail. Seals and dogs were especially heard to oob. Of a dog: ‘He wid rin a bit afore me oobin’ as he guid’. The word came in from Old Norse op (with a long vowel – ‘ohp’), ‘crying, shouting’, but it had its parallels in Old English wop (also with a long vowel), ‘clamour, lament’.
oobit or woubit (noun)
Derbyshire, Durham, Northumberland, Scotland
A ragged, unkempt, hairy person. From Northumberland: ‘Get away, ye clarty [filthy] oubit!’ It’s an extension of the name of the long-haired caterpillar of the tiger-moth, also called a ‘woolly bear’ (wolbede in Middle English, which simplified in pronunciation to oobit). In Scotland, it was usually heard preceded by ‘hairy’.
orp (verb)
Scotland
To weep with a convulsive pant; more commonly, fret, chide. A common expression was to ‘orp and pine’. And if you were orpit, you were querulous or fretful. From Aberdeenshire: ‘Benjie was an orpiet, peeakin’ [peevish] little sinner’.
otherguess (adjective)
Cumberland, Devon, Somerset, Wiltshire, Yorkshire
Of another kind or variety. It’s an adaptation of othergates or otherguise, the older meanings of the second element being replaced by something more understandable. From Yorkshire: ‘Them words hez quite an clear an othergaz meanin’. Otherkins was also used in Yorkshire with this meaning. In Devon, it was other-lucker.
owmly see oamly
oxter (noun)
Cumberland, Derbyshire, Durham, Ireland, Isle of Man, Lancashire, Northumberland, Scotland, Suffolk, Westmorland, Yorkshire
The armpit; the fold of the arm when bent against the body; the armhole of a piece of clothing. From Westmorland: ‘Ah’s as sair as can be under mi oxters whar mi jacket rubs’. Several compound words arose. If you were stiff in the arm and shoulders you were oxter-bound. To walk arm in arm with a person was to oxter-cog. Oxterful was an armful; oxterdeep was being up to your armpits; an oxter-pouch was a breast-pocket; an oxter-staff was a crutch. Idioms too: to bring someone a present was to come with the crooked oxter; if you were walking with a downcast head you had your head under your oxter. This widely used word comes from Old English oxta, ‘armpit’.