T

taffety (adjective)

Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Kent, Somerset, Surrey, Sussex, Wiltshire

Dainty, fastidious, particular, especially as regards food. From Dorset: ‘He’s so taffety, he won’t eat what others will’. The word sometimes transferred to the eaten rather than the eater. From Hampshire: ‘I could eat a taffety chicken’ – tender, succulent. The word comes from taffeta, a fabric that evidently came to be associated with people of delicate taste and temperament.

tanklements (noun)

Lancashire, Yorkshire

Implements, accoutrements, litter, articles of finery. The notion applied to everything from tiny ornaments on a mantelpiece to large garden tools. From Lancashire: ‘Let thi bits o’ tanklements stop where they are’. The word is a variant of tanglements.

tantrups (noun)

Middlesex

Ill-humoured disturbances. ‘Not that we means to make tantrups, you know’. This is a variant of tantrums, but with the additional nuance that the behaviour causes something to be ‘up’ – in a state of disorder. As for tantrums itself, the origin is unknown.

tawm (verb)

Cumberland, Lancashire, Scotland, Yorkshire

To fall gently asleep; swoon. From Yorkshire: ‘Ah was just tawmin ower to sleep’. ‘I’se like to tawme, this day’s seay varry warme’. The word was also used as a noun to refer to a fit of drowsiness or faintness. The source isn’t known, though there are several verbs in Germanic languages which could be related, such as Old Norse talma, ‘hinder, obstruct’ (l often changes into a vowel, as in calm, palm, etc.).

terrification (noun)

Scotland

Terror, or anything causing it. From Ayrshire: ‘There was an outcry and a roaring that was a terrification to hear’. The -ation suffix forms a noun of action from a verb (as in alter > alteration), and thus adds an element of urgency that the basic noun, terror, lacks.

tharfish (adjective)

Cumberland, Northumberland, Scotland, Yorkshire

Reluctant, unwilling, shy, of heavy countenance. From Yorkshire: ‘She’s rather a tharfish kind of a bairn [child]’. Tharf comes from an Old English word meaning ‘unleavened’, where the bread had a heavy or stiff quality. People still talked of tharf-bread and tharf-cakes in the North Country. Physical heaviness later transferred to heaviness of spirit – a quality that could be attributed even to inanimate objects, as in this use of the associated adverb from Northumberland: ‘She’s gan varry tharfly’ – said of a clock that appeared to be ready to stop at any moment.

thrawn (adjective)

Durham, Ireland, Scotland

Perverse, obstinate, rebellious. From Northern Ireland, of a farmer: he was ‘as thrawin’ as a mule’. When used of the weather, such as ‘a thrawn wind’, it meant ‘disagreeable, bitter’. A misshapen body, distorted face, or knitted brow would also be ‘thrawn’. The common element is the notion of turning away from what is normal, and this was the earliest sense of the verb throw, from which the Scottish form thraw derives.

thrimble see thrumble

thring (verb)

Scotland, Yorkshire, and throughout the North Country

To press, push, squeeze; press forward, push one’s way in. From Dumfriesshire: ‘I shall just thring on here till I get desperate’. It comes from the Old English verb þringan (the initial letter was pronounced ‘th’) ‘to press, crowd’ – related to throng.

thruffable (adjective)

Yorkshire

Open throughout, and thus transparently honest and sincere. ‘A thruffable sort of a body’. The source is through, with the -gh pronounced as f (as in enough): a thruffable person is someone who is capable of being ‘seen through’.

thrumble or thrimble (verb)

Cheshire, Cumberland, Scotland, Yorkshire

To finger, handle, especially to work something between the finger and thumb to test its quality; fumble, grope. From Banffshire: ‘He thrummilt i’ the hole fir’t a [for the] file afore he got it’. The word takes further the process seen in thring above. From the general notion of ‘pressing’, we get the more specific ‘press between the fingers’.

thrung (noun)

Yorkshire

Trouble. ‘I told mony a barefaced lee t’ keep him out o’ thrung at ooam [home]’. The word comes from Old English þreagung (the initial letter was pronounced ‘th’), ‘a threatening’.

thumbasing see fummasing

thusk (noun)

Lancashire

A blow, thump. ‘Aw gan him a thusk i’ th’ yer-hole [earhole]’. To leet thusk was to ‘come with a thump’. ‘My heart leet thusk again mi soide at oych word loik a sledge hammer’. In Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, other forms were recorded that went in different semantic directions. If you were a thusky person you were big. Someone who did something with great energy was a thusker.

tiddytoit or tiddytoity (verb)

Yorkshire

To loiter, idle, waste time. ‘Tom duz’nt loike mitch wark, he likes ta tiddytoity aboot’. A playful formation, it combines tiddy ‘tiny’ and toit ‘totter’.

tiff-taffle (adjective or verb)

Nottinghamshire

To talk in a bantering manner, joke, make repartee. ‘Wheniver A cums across ’im, A have a bit o’ tiff-taffling talk wee ’im’. Tiff normally had a negative meaning – a slight quarrel or fit of temper – but here it has developed a more positive tone, aided by the reduplication, which usually adds an informal and playful tone to a word (as with chit-chat, bing-bang, etc.).

timdoodle (noun)

Cornwall

A term of contempt applied to a stupid, silly fellow. ‘Tha gret timdoodle!’ Doodle was a commonly used form in relation to stupidity. Dr Johnson includes another, fopdoodle, in his Dictionary. The tim part might be a person’s name, but – this being tin-mining Cornwall – it could just as easily be a variant of tin, used by people who looked down on the miners.

tiny-tiny (interjection)

Northumberland

A proclamation made when people find something unexpected (such as a coin on the ground). The first one to see it says ‘tiny-tiny’, and the first to claim it says ‘miney-miney’.

toldrum (noun)

Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire

Finery. From Yorkshire: ‘Dressed up in her toldrums’. In Lincolnshire, if you were gaudily attired you were toldered or tawdered, and the alternative spelling reveals the etymology. It is tawdry (short for tawdry lace, a silk necktie commonly worn by women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), which became a general word for any kind of cheap or showy decoration. Tawdry, in turn, is short for St Audrey, the patron saint of Ely, who, according to Anglo-Saxon historians, adorned herself with fine necklaces in her youth, and died of a throat tumour (which she considered a just punishment).

toober (verb)

Northumberland, Scotland, Worcestershire

To beat, strike, shake. Ina Scottish version of St Matthew’s Gospel (24:49), the bad servant ‘Sall begin to toober his fellow-servan’s’. It’s a development of tabor, a small drum, widely used across the Midlands in the sense of ‘knock’, and used as a noun as well. In Worcestershire: ‘Thur comed a tabber at the doore’.

toot-moot (noun)

Scotland

A low, muttered conversation; the muttering which begins a dispute. From Aberdeenshire: ‘I thocht I heard a toot-moot of tha kin’ afore I left’. Moot is a variant of mute. Toot is being used in the general sense of ‘make a noise (in the manner of a musical instrument)’, in much the same way as one can trumpet something around. There’s a lovely old Scottish expression, an old toot in a new horn – stale news.

torfle (verb)

Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Northumberland, Scotland, Westmorland, Yorkshire

To pine away, decline in health; tire out. From Yorkshire: ‘I’m ommast [almost] toffild wi’ me long wauak’. There’s also an adjective: ‘That hen leeaks [looks] varry torfly’. The etymology isn’t known, but there could be a link with topple.

tossicated (adjective)

Berkshire, Cheshire, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Devon, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Shropshire, Somerset, Warwickshire, Westmorland, Yorkshire

Tossed about, disturbed in mind; harassed, worried; puzzled, tormented. From Shropshire: ‘Poor owd Molly looks bad, ’er’s bin sadly tossicated lately ooth one thing or tother’. The word was also used throughout the country in its original sense, an adaptation of intoxicated. From Warwickshire: ‘I were raly only tosticated once in my life, and that were from having some gin in my beer’.

towardly (adjective or adverb)

Berkshire, Cheshire, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Shropshire, Wiltshire

Docile, quiet, easily managed; kindly, well contented. From Herefordshire: ‘A uncommon towardly pony; some is so frangy and untowardly’. It could also be an encouraging sign to a hopeful suitor. From Berkshire: ‘She looked at un [him] a bit towartly’. It’s unusual to see a preposition, toward(s), becoming a full content word in this way.

toze (verb)

Cheshire, Cornwall, Devon, Lincolnshire, Shropshire, Somerset

Disentangle, pull asunder. From Somerset, a nurse said of a lady’s hair that had become matted: ‘let me toze it out, a little at a time’. It’s a variant of tease, in its earliest sense in the woollen trade of ‘separate fibres’. And, as with tease, it developed a wide range of meanings. In Shropshire, ‘pluck with the claws’: a cat would ‘toze the cushion all to pieces’. In Cheshire, ‘tide over a difficulty’: ‘We con maybe toze on a bit with it’ – pull through.

tragwallet (verb)

Cheshire, Ireland, Scotland

To wonder about in a slovenly manner, gad about. ‘I wonder at um goin’ tragwallitin about the country’. This is wallet in the sense of ‘traveller’s bag’. Trag is a variant of traik, widely used in Ireland, Scotland, and the North Country with the same meaning. Its etymology is unclear. It may be related to trudge.

trangleys (noun)

Dorset

Rubbishy trinkets, such as broken ironmongery or bits of joinery, used by children as toys. ‘I am setting his room in order, so that when he comes back he may find all his poor jim-cracks and trangleys as he left ’em’. The word was evidently attractive as a basis for playfulness. In Cheshire, a similar meaning is found in tranklibobus and the plural form tranklibobs. Further north, in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Yorkshire, they were trankliments. Still further north, in Scotland, they were trantlums. Further south, in East Anglia and Devon, they were trinkums. The origin is probably trinket.

trickumtrully (adverb)

Oxfordshire

Used in the phrase to play trickumtrully – to play false, act unfairly. ‘Did you ever know me for to play trickumtrully!’ The second element is probably a variant of truly.

trimple (verb)

Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire

To tread gingerly, as one with tender feet, or wearing tight boots. From Shropshire: ‘ ’Ow that chap trimples alung – ’e met be walkin’ on sparables [shoe-nails]’. A further meaning, ‘walk lamely’, indicates the etymology: a combination of tread and limp.

tud (noun)

Shetland Isles

A sudden squall; a sudden gust or blast of wind, snow, rain. ‘Du ye no hear da wind. Yon’s snawy [snowy] tuds apo’ da lum [against the chimney]’. The word is a variant of thud. It could also be used to mean ‘talk a great deal’.

tush (verb)

Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire

To draw a heavy weight along the ground, drag anything too heavy to be carried. From Shropshire: ‘If I canna carry ’em, be ’appen I can tush ’em alung’. The word is the action that is the opposite of push, from which it probably derives, influenced by tug. (Tush meaning ‘buttocks’ isn’t related: that has a Yiddish origin.)

tut (noun)

Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire

Offence, usually in the phrase to take tut. From Buckinghamshire: ‘He took tut at it’. Someone who was usually testy, touchy, apt to take offence would be called tutty. From Northamptonshire: ‘How tutty he is to-day’.

twanker (noun)

Cumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire

A large, bulky person; anything especially large or fine. From Cumberland: ‘There were two pigs charged for, a couple of twankers they are’. The adjective was twanking. In Yorkshire, a related word was recorded for severe, keen, or biting weather: ‘A twanking frost’. The etymology isn’t known; but in Lincolnshire anything very large was called a twanger, which may have been an earlier playful form.

twazzy (adjective)

Lancashire, Yorkshire

Cross, bad-tempered, irritable, quarrelsome, snappish. From Yorkshire, describing a man coming home after work: ‘ill-tempered and twazzy’. He would have been in a state of twazziness. It’s probably a variant of twist, as in this part of the world twisty was also used in the same sense. One could also twist and twine (from whine), ‘be peevish’.

twickered (adjective)

Isle of Wight

Tired, exhausted, usually in the phrase twickered out. ‘A must be purely twickered out wiv het [heat] and doust and drouth [dryness] and all’. The etymology is unclear, but it is probably related to twick, from Old English twiccian, ‘twitch’.

twitterty-snip (adverb)

Devon

Restlessly, nervously. ‘I marked that her fingers went twitterty-snip, just for all the world after the fashion of her tongue in days gone by’. This is twitter in its later (not birdsong) sense of ‘tremble, be in a state of nervous apprehension’, which had widespread dialect use in the British Isles and the USA. Come to think of it, that isn’t too far away from the state of mind of some who use the modern social-networking service.