wab (noun)
Cornwall, Devon, Lincolnshire, Somerset
The tongue – usually in the phrase hold your wab! But the word took on a more general meaning, as a result of not holding one’s wab – ‘chatter, gossip’. From Somerset: ‘She an’ my meesus do mostly wab together of an evening’. The etymology isn’t known. It may be an echoic word, perhaps a shortened form of babble or wobble (the tongue being one of the wobbliest parts of human anatomy).
wallowish (adjective)
Cumberland, Derbyshire, Durham, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Scotland, Westmorland, Worcestershire, Yorkshire
Insipid, tasteless; watery (of cider, beer, etc.). From Lincolnshire: ‘I’d gotten no salt to put in it; it maks ita bit wallowish’. The word became even more negative when it was used for anything with a sickly or sour taste. From Worcestershire: ‘The doctor’s give me some stuff as is downright wallowish; but I’m bound to saay it ’ave done me a power o’ good’. It’s from an Old English word, wealg, meaning ‘insipid’.
wally or waly (adjective)
Northumberland, Scotland
Beautiful, excellent, fine, thriving, pleasant, jolly. From Northumberland, people on a day out would be having ‘a wally time’. From Scotland, Burns uses it in ‘Tam o’Shanter’ (l. 164): ‘There was ae winsome wench and walie’. It seems to have been widely used in the North Country as a general term of admiration, but its etymology isn’t known. Today, of course, wally as a noun (unrelated to the adjective) has acquired a totally different set of associations, as a mild term of abuse.
wambliness (noun)
Devon
An uneasiness or upheaval of the stomach. ‘It do bring him a wambliness of the innards to do or say ought as may draw the public eye upon us’. Wamble – often spelled without the b, as wammel, wommel, and the like – was widely used in England, Scotland, and Ireland as a noun or verb to refer to food churning around or rumbling in the stomach. From Lancashire: ‘Mi inside’s o ov a wamble’. And if you were feeling shaky, you were all wambly. The origin is wame, a northern dialect form of womb, which meant ‘belly’ (as well as ‘uterus’) in Anglo-Saxon times.
wapsy (adjective)
Berkshire, Devon, Hampshire, Sussex, Yorkshire
Irritable, testy, ill natured, spiteful, hot tempered. From Devon: ‘I won’t ask ’un – her’d be wapsy with me’. It was – and still is – a common dialect pronunciation of wasp to reverse the s and the p.
washamouth (noun)
Devon, Somerset
One who blurts out anything heard; a foul-mouthed person. From Somerset: ‘Don’t ’ee tell her nort, her’s the proper’s little warshamouth ever you meet way; nif you do, ’t’ll be all over the town in no time’. There’s clearly a link to the idiom go wash your mouth out, used as a reproof to someone who has used foul language or told a lie.
weeze (verb)
Berkshire, Cheshire, Hampshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Scotland, Somerset, Sussex, Warwickshire, Yorkshire
To drain away, drip gently, ooze out. From Cheshire: ‘There’s a spring of water weezes out from yon hill side’. From Northamptonshire: ‘I’m afeard the bottle’ll burst, it weezes out so at the cork’. The word is from Old English wesan, from wos, ‘ooze’.
whangy (adjective)
Cumberland, Lancashire, Westmorland, Yorkshire
Tough, leathery. From Lancashire: ‘This meat’s varra whangy’. In Yorkshire whangy cheese was a very hard kind of cheese, made out of old milk. A whang was a long strip of leather, such as might be used in a shoelace or whip. The word is from Old English þwang, ‘thong’ (the initial letter was pronounced ‘th’).
wheem (adjective)
Cheshire, Cumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Scotland, Westmorland, Yorkshire
Pleasant, gentle, easy; soft, smooth; calm, quiet. From Westmorland: ‘The machine runs very wheem when it is in good order’. In Yorkshire, calm unruffled water was described as wheem. The adverb wheemly turns up in an old Lakeland saw: ‘Time gaes by, an gaes seeah whemely, Yan can nivver hear his tread’. The word is from Old English cweman, ‘to please, delight’, and was often spelled queem.
whemmle (verb)
Bedfordshire, Cumberland, Durham, Huntingdonshire, Ireland, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Northumberland, Scotland, Westmorland, Yorkshire
To invert a vessel in order to cover over something. From Yorkshire: ‘I whemmeld dubler [a large bowl] owr’th meat, To keep it seaf and warm for you’. The word was widely used in an enormous number of spellings (whomble, wimmel, wummel . . . ) in many parts of the country, especially the Midlands and North. Further south, we find a similar word, whelve, with the same meaning. It’s from an Old English verb which gave rise to whelm (as in overwhelm), ‘upset, turn upside down’. The l and the m have been transposed.
whid or whud (noun)
Norfolk, Scotland, Suffolk
An exaggerated statement or story, a lie, a fib. From Kirkcudbrightshire: ‘Fishers [fishermen] gets the name o’ bein fearfu fir coinin awfu [awful] whuds’. As an earlier dictionary-writer put it: ‘It conveys the idea of less aggravation than that which is attached to the term lie’. A brief characterization from Perthshire summarizes its use as a verb: ‘Whiddins an airt [art]’ – reflecting the word’s history, from Old English cwide, ‘proverb, saying’.
whimmy (adjective)
Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Sussex, Worcestershire, Yorkshire
Full of whims, fanciful, changeable. From Nottinghamshire: ‘He’s as whimmy as a dog’s hairy’. From Cornwall: ‘He’s whiffy [changeable] and whimmy and a bit hippety-like [frivolous]’.
whud see whid
wibberful (noun)
Kent
A more easily articulated version of wheelbarrowful. Wheelbarrow itself became a wilber or wibber, used both as a noun and a verb. Try saying ‘I wibber’d out a wibberful’ in its full form and you’ll sense immediately why the dialect forms evolved.
wilta-shalta (adverb)
Lancashire, Yorkshire
An expression of strong necessity – the equivalent of willy-nilly. From Lancashire: ‘They lifted him clear off his feet an’ carried him off wiltta shollta, whether he would or not’. The origin is ‘will-to shall-to’, and spellings varied greatly as writers tried to capture its different local pronunciations.
woodled (adjective)
Northamptonshire
Muffled, wrapped about the head and neck. ‘You’re so woodled up, I don’t think you’ll catch cold’. The etymology isn’t known. The word is similar in sound to huddle, mobble (‘muffle up’), cuddle, and other words that all seem to be expressing a sense of closeness and enclosure.
wordify (verb)
Devon, Yorkshire
To put into words. From Devon: ‘’Tiddn’t no use wordifying sich acts, now things ha’ changed’. If you weren’t good at wordifying, you were word-shy. Also from Devon: ‘He was never speechful, and grew more word-shy with years’.
work-brittle (adjective)
Cheshire, Derbyshire, Essex, Herefordshire, Lancashire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire
Fond of work, industrious, intent upon one’s work. From Warwickshire: ‘I hope you feel work-brittle; there’s plenty to do to-day’. The second element is a puzzle, as brittle normally has meanings to do with fragility and unreliability; but a comment from Cheshire gives a hint about the possible sense development: ‘Used with a sort of implication that diligence is rather unusual’.
wosbird or wuzbird (noun)
Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Somerset, Sussex, Wiltshire
A term of abuse for a good-for-nothing person; also used to children and animals. From the Isle of Wight: ‘Come out o’ that ye young wuzbird, or I’ll git a stick and prid near cut ye in two’. Another sense, of ‘illegitimate child’, points to the etymology – a local pronunciation of whore’s brood.
wostle (verb)
Cumberland, Yorkshire
To put up or obtain refreshment at an inn. ‘Where do you wostle at?’ The inn would be a wost-house, and the host would be the wost. A wostler was an ostler – a word that comes from hosteler, a medieval word for the keeper of a hostelry.
woubit see oobit
wudge (verb)
Yorkshire
To do anything vigorously, especially to eat voraciously. ‘Aw wor wudgin’ in ta sum tommy [bread and cheese] and teea’. The etymology isn’t known. The word may relate to wedge, in its sense of ‘push in’.
wuzbird see wosbird