rackups (noun)
Cumberland, Isle of Man, Westmorland
The consequences of defeat or ill-doing. From Cumberland: ‘Let every man stand his awn rackups’. The usage seems to have been proverbial. From the Isle of Man: ‘But don’t think I can’t stand my rackups, as the saying is’. The origin lies in a game of marbles, called rackups. The loser places a marble between his fingers, just below the knuckles. The winner then fires another marble at it, usually hitting the knuckles. Ouch.
radgy (adjective)
Cumberland, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire
Ill-tempered, angry, excited. From Lincolnshire: ‘Them bairns was real radgy at the notion o’ goin’ to Cleethorpes’. The origin is rage. Also, in Yorkshire, if you were furious, you were radged.
rainified (adjective or adverb)
Herefordshire, Middlesex, Surrey
Inclined to rain. From Middlesex: ‘I’m afeard it looks rather rainified this morning’. From Herefordshire: ‘It blows rainified’.
rallack (noun)
Lancashire, Westmorland, Yorkshire
A roving character, an idle good-for-nothing. From Westmorland: ‘He’s nowt nobbut a gurt [great] rallak’. To be on’t rallak was to be boisterously enjoying oneself. Also from Westmorland: ‘Thi fadder’s on t’rallak’. The word was widely used across the North Country. It’s a variant of rollick (as in ‘We had a rollicking good time’), which was probably a blend of romp and frolic.
ramfeezled (adjective)
Scotland
Exhausted with work. From Forfar: ‘I’m fairly ramfeezl’d’. The result of your fatigue would be ramfeezlement. This is ram in its usual sense of ‘act with vigour or energy’. Feeze, likewise, was a verb that had meanings to do with energetic action. The combination of the two suggests a really intense meaning for the word. If you were ramfeezled, you really were worn out.
randivoose (noun)
Cornwall, Devon
A noise, uproar. From Cornwall: ‘What’s all the randivoose? I can’t hear myself speak’. The origin is the French loanword rendezvous. Such encounters, at least in the West Country, must often have been noisy affairs. Another attempt at the word in this part of the world was rangevouge. In Suffolk it was renterfuge.
rasmws (noun)
Wales
A mighty man – but usually with negative associations. From Cardiganshire: ‘He is a rasmws of a man’. The Welsh spelling hides the origin, which is the name Erasmus. Whether the origin is the famous Dutch scholar or some unpopular local personality (Erasmus was quite a common first name in this part of Wales) is a mystery.
rickmatick (noun)
Scotland, Ireland
Concern, affair, collection. From Northern Ireland: ‘I sent off the whole rickmatick’. From Forfar: ‘Brocht the hale [whole] rickmatick clatterin’ down on the floor’. People usually talked about ‘the whole rickmatick’. This is rick in the sense of ‘heap, pile’ (as in hayrick), with the numerical sense of arithmetic not far away.
rifty (adjective)
Cheshire, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Durham, Ireland, Isle of Man, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Scotland, Westmorland, Yorkshire
Causing a belch. From Yorkshire: ‘This is rifty meat’. Rift in this sense is from Old Norse, where the related verb meant ‘belch’. From Nottinghamshire: ‘Parsnips allus make me rift’. Rifty could also be applied to anyone ‘belching abuse’. And if you were rifting-full, you were totally replete.
rightle (verb)
Bedfordshire, Cumberland, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Rutland, Westmorland, Yorkshire
To set in order, put to rights. From Rutland: ‘I’ll take one o’ thay old toobs [tubs] an’ rightle it oop for the children’s rabbits’. In Ireland, the corresponding verb was rightify: ‘I wondher any one would throw away their time sthrivin to rightify you’.
ronkish (adjective)
Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire
Mischievous, precociously wanton. From Warwickshire: ‘He’s a ronkish youth’. This is an adaptation of the adjective rank in its senses of ‘cunning’ and ‘depraved’, combining the two. From Nottinghamshire: ‘Oh, the woman’s a ronk un! Ivry child she’s hed es bin by a different man’.
ronkle (verb)
Cheshire, Cornwall, Devon
To fester, be inflamed. From Cheshire: ‘Aw geet a prick i’ my thumb, an’ it’s done nowt bu’ ronkle ever sin’. There was a figurative sense too: something can ronkle in one’s mind. It’s a local form of rankle.
roomthy (adjective)
Berkshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire
Roomy. From Warwickshire: ‘These housen is very roomthy.’ The noun is roomth, ‘a room’ – not to be thought of as a lisped version of rooms. In Pembrokeshire, they said roomly.
rox (verb)
Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Isle of Wight, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire
To soften, decay. From Leicestershire, of a gatepost: ‘It roxes at the end, loike’. Fruit would be said to rox, as would the ground after a frost, and a dry cough when it begins to loosen. The origin isn’t clear, but there may be an association with rot.
rumgumption (noun)
Northumberland, Scotland, Yorkshire
Rough common sense, shrewdness. From Aberdeenshire, a poetic couplet: ‘Sure it wad be gryte presumption, / In ane [one] wha has sae sma’ [such small] rumgumption’. Rumgumptious is the adjective, meaning ‘shrewd, witty’, but also sometimes ‘pompous, forward’. Rum often had this double application, expressing both positive and negative meanings. For some people, to call a man a rum cove was to praise him; for others it was to criticize him. Gumption, ‘common sense’, seems to be Scots in origin. A further variant in the North Country was rummelgumption.
ryntle (verb)
Yorkshire
To roll about in a chair in a lazy manner – the ry- rhymes with my. ‘She ryntled abaht like a cah [cow]’. The origin isn’t known. It could be a variant of round. Or it could be related to rindle, which describes the gentle flowing of a small stream (rynel in Old English).