My aim in writing this book was twofold. First, I wanted to celebrate one of the greatest – yet most neglected – lexicographic achievements of modern times. Most people who have an interest in language know of the dictionaries compiled by Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, and James Murray. Their stories have often been told, in textbooks and biographies. By contrast, few know of Wright’s work, and fewer still have read the lovingly detailed memoir – long out of print – written by his wife Elizabeth in 1932. His dictionary is disappearing when it should be being remembered.
My other aim was to celebrate the dialects themselves. I find old words fascinating, especially when they express a notion in a vivid, playful, or ingenious way. Often they make us see things in a different light, or suggest an alternative way of talking about something to what is available in present-day English. Often it’s simply the sound of the old word that captures the imagination. And always, there is the etymological question: how on earth did this word come to be used in this way? I’ve therefore chosen entries that illustrate the many different kinds of word and word history that are found in Wright’s dictionary, but which are likely to be found in any dialect, ancient or modern.
I’ve also chosen words whose meaning is still relevant today. I didn’t include words that reflected practices that have long died out – such as old street-games, legal systems, political parties, village customs, and farming methods – intriguing though these are in themselves. I thought it would be more interesting to find words that could still be used today, in relation to such topics as the weather, insults, everyday activities, types of personality, and states of mind. Indeed, in recent months I’ve found myself wanting to use several of these old words in conversation, simply because it seemed to suit the tone or mood of what I wanted to say better than any modern equivalent. Sometimes, indeed, there is no modern word that quite captures the nuance of the dialect form. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that some of these old words achieve a new lease of life, as a consequence.
For this book, I’ve taken around 900 words and expressions from the dictionary and presented them in an alphabetical list of nearly 500 entries. My entries reflect Wright’s balance of coverage. You will notice the large number of items under letter S, for example – 84 entries (18 per cent of the whole). This is because S is the largest letter in Wright’s coverage, taking up a massive 700 pages of his Dictionary and including 20,450 entries (also 18 per cent).
I’ve kept Wright’s headword spellings and definitions, and the quotations illustrating local usage are also in their original spelling. I haven’t included all the spelling variations he noted, though, as there are simply too many. When people write down dialect pronunciations, they do so in all kinds of idiosyncratic ways. It’s therefore often difficult to ‘hear’ the original accent through the spellings.
The only departure from his treatment has been to update his etymologies, insofar as more recent research has uncovered fresh historical relationships – though a surprising number of words are still ‘etymology unknown’. I’ve also kept his geographical descriptions. The county names will not all be familiar, therefore, as nomenclature and political status have changed several times since the end of the nineteenth century. The maps on pages xxii–xxiii show the counties as they were in 1900.
A new lease of life? But perhaps some of these words haven’t died out at all, and are still used or remembered in parts of the country. For every entry in this book, I found myself wondering: is the word really gone? And might it be known by readers from a different county than those mentioned by Wright? There are pages at the back of this book (and a website) for such encounters to be recorded. Dead or alive? That is the question.
Maps
The counties of England, Wales and Scotland, 1900
