abbey-lubber (noun)
Somerset, Yorkshire, and among sailors
An idle person, someone who loafs around. A 1679 dictionary pulled no punches: ‘a slothful loiterer in a religious house under pretence of retirement and austerity’. Another early description is ‘an arch-frequenter of the cloister beef-pot’, summing it up in the very fine coinage: archimarmitonerastique. And yes, there is a link with the (‘Love it, Hate it, Just don’t forget it’) Marmite. A marmite was a metal cooking-pot – an image still seen on jars of that foodstuff.
abundation (noun)
Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire
A great quantity. John Wycliffe’s Bible popularized the new word (in the fourteenth century) abundance. Abundation seems to have emerged later as a down-market alternative, especially for situations where things aren’t going right. We read of a Cheshire man bemoaning the lack of turnips while ‘we shan have abundation o’teetoes’. It carries echoes of inundation.
aclite (adverb)
Northumberland, Scotland
Awry, out of joint. The Tyneside poet Robert Gilchrist lamented the loss to Newcastle of the death of a beloved character in ‘Blind Willie’s Epitaph’:
Newcastle’s now a dowdy place – all things seem sore aclite,
For here at last Blind Willie lies, an honest, harmless wight.
adawds (adverb)
Yorkshire
In pieces. You’d usually hear it in the phrase ‘rive all adawds’ – to tear something into little bits. A dawd or dad was widely used across the North of England and up into Scotland to mean a lump or chunk of something. People would talk about ‘a dad o’ bread’ or ‘dawds o’ cheese’ – or even ‘dawds o’ common sense’. Adawds was recorded only in Yorkshire by Joseph Wright, also in the spelling adauds, but it was probably widespread further north.
addle (adjective)
Herefordshire, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Surrey, Sussex
Unwell, ailing; tumble-down, loose, shaky. Only eggs and brains seem to be addled these days. In earlier times, it could be most things. From Sussex: ‘My little girl seemed rather addle this morning’ – so she didn’t go to school. Anything in a rickety condition might be described as addle. From Kent: ‘Dat waggin be turrble addle’. The word meant ‘slime’ or ‘piss’ in Old English.
afflufe (adverb)
Scotland
Extempore, without premeditation. The word, often written aff loof, was chiefly used to describe someone telling a story spontaneously, from memory – ‘off book’. Loof was an old North Country word, borrowed from Old Norse, for the palm of a hand – hence the meaning of ‘off hand’ (which became ‘offhand’). A normal process for speech, it had risky implications when used in other contexts. ‘Whene’er I shoot wi’ my air gun’, writes a man in 1789, ‘ ’Tis ay aff loof’. People kept well away from him.
afflunters see flunter
a-goggle (adjective)
Berkshire, Hampshire
Trembling. Agog these days is all to do with excitement and expectation, but in some dialects it had the meaning of being ‘on the move’; and when part of one’s body was repeatedly on the move – as with involuntary shaking during an illness – the frequency was neatly captured by a-goggle. ‘His head is all a-goggle’, someone might say. The word seems to have died out in this sense – presumably because goggle developed a more dominant meaning to do with staring eyes.
ainish see hainish
aizam-jazam (adjective)
Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire
Equitable, fair and square. The spelling varies greatly. From Worcestershire, of a dishonest bargain: ‘That job’s not quite aizam-jaizam’. From Staffordshire: ‘I shouldn’t care if he’d only act hasum-jasum with me’. The origin seems to be a form of easy in its sense of ‘even’ – a sense still around today, as when we say I’m easy, meaning ‘I don’t mind either way’. The doubled form intensified the meaning, much as it does in easy-peasy.
alag (adverb)
Cumberland, Northumberland, Yorkshire
Not sufficiently perpendicular. Ladders against walls could be described as alag. But more often, the word had a negative implication. From Northumberland: ‘It’s all alag’. From Yorkshire: ‘It lies alag’. Doubtless the contributors were thinking of a failed attempt at DIY shelving.
alkitotle or alcatote (noun)
Devon
A foolish fellow. ‘Go, ya alkitotle!’ writes Peter Lock, the author of Exmoor Scolding, in 1768. Here’s the full title of his book:
An Exmoor Scolding, in the Propriety and Decency of Exmoor Language, between Two Sisters, Wilmot Moreman & Thomasin Moreman, as They Were Spinning. . . . Together with Notes, and a Vocabulary For explaining uncouth Expressions, and interpreting barbarous Words and Phrases.
And, for the record, a sample of the exchange:
Wilmot: ya purling, tatchy, stertling, joweriiig, prinking, mincing theng!
Thomasin: ya gurt chonnting, grumbling, glumping, zower-sapped, yerring trash!
It goes on like that for pages. Like alkitotle, the origin of many scolding words is lost in the mists of time.
all-overish (adjective)
Berkshire, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Somerset, Warwickshire
Slightly out of sorts, nervous. From Warwickshire: a man complains of feeling ‘All-overish, queer-like’ – going down with something. But you can be well and still feel all-overish, especially when you hear some unpalatable news, find yourself in a threatening situation, or encounter an uncomfortable topic, as with this Cornishman: ‘There’s a kind of what-I-can’t-tell-’ee about dead men that’s very enticin’, tho’ it do make you feel all-overish’.
alunt (adverb)
Scotland
In a blazing state. A lunt was a lighted match or pipe, or something you would use for lighting (a fire or the fuse of a firework or gun). Flames leaping up would be lunting. So would someone walking along smoking. The word arrived from Dutch in the sixteenth century, and was later adapted to states of mind: ‘Sweet Meg maist set my saul alunt’, writes a Scottish poet in 1811.
amplush (noun)
Ireland, Wales
A disadvantage, state of unreadiness. From Pembrokeshire: ‘I did’n expect it, a took me all on a umplush’. An amplush also turns up as a namplush – the kind of mix-up we often see in the history of English, as with adder coming from a naddre, or apron from a napron (see also attercop, nazzard). Amplush may be a version of nonplus – as in ‘I was nonplussed’.
anguishous (adjective)
Cheshire, Lancashire
Painful, or sorrowful – but much stronger. From Lancashire: ‘He lookt quite anguishous, an aw felt sorry for him’. The word works in both directions: something that causes anguish, or the feeling that results from being fraught with anguish. It’s an ancient word, dating from the thirteenth century, when it arrived in English from French, expressing something stronger than just anxious or distressed.
aptish or eptish (adjective)
Yorkshire
Skilful, quick-witted. This is apt meaning ‘ready to learn’, rather than ‘suitable’ or ‘appropriate’. From North Yorkshire: ‘He’s eptish at his book-lear’. But the word could also be used for things: people might talk about a tool being aptish for a particular job. Don’t read in the meaning of -ish as ‘somewhat’ (as in brownish). Think of it along with words where the meaning is ‘truly resembling’, such as boyish and sluggish.
apurt (adjective or adverb)
Devon, Somerset
Sulky, disagreeable; in a sulky manner. From Somerset: ‘Her tookt her zel [self] off proper apurt, and no mistake’. Purt meaning ‘sulk’ was widely used in south-west England: someone might be called ‘a purting glum-pot’, for instance, and if you put on a sulky face, you were gone purt. Decaying potatoes were gone purt too. The origin isn’t clear, but there may be a relationship with pout.
argh (adjective or adverb)
Durham, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Scotland, Sussex, Yorkshire
Fearful, apprehensive. This is one of the unusual gh spellings where the pronunciation developed into [f], as in enough, and the word is indeed often spelled with an f in dialect writing. From Aberdeenshire: ‘I have an eargh kind of feeling on hearing the owls’. From Lincolnshire: ‘I’m arf you’ve hurted the bunny’. The word could also mean ‘insufficient’ or ‘scanty’, and this led to its common use as an adverb when telling the time, as in Roxburgh: ‘It’s erfe twal o’clock’ – almost twelve. There was a noun, too: arghness, meaning ‘timidity’ or ‘reluctance’. It all goes back to an Old English word for ‘cowardly’.
argle (verb)
Durham, Lincolnshire, Scotland, Warwickshire, Worcestershire
Argue. The pronunciation shift totally changes the feel of this word, making it sound more like its meaning, like haggle and niggle. Indeed, the word might originally have come from a confusion with haggle, for it was often used to describe bargaining with someone. Then it reduplicated. An argle-bargle was an argument(like argie-bargie). An argle-bargler was a really argumentative type. And if you were really quarrelsome, you were argol-bargolous.
arse-verse (noun)
Scotland, Yorkshire
Despite its appearance, this has nothing to do with one’s rear end. It was a spell written on the side of a house to ward off fire – and sometimes witchcraft. The arse part comes from a Latin word meaning ‘burn’ – seen today in arson.
arsle (verb)
Cumberland, Lancashire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Yorkshire
Move backwards – from a Dutch word, aarzelen, which probably arrived in England via the trade routes between Holland and East Anglia. In Norfolk, a timid boxer was described as someone who ‘kept arseling backwards, and durst not meet his man’. If you were ‘arseling about’ while sitting down, you were fidgeting. These days, it would be impossible to use the word without the buttocks making their presence felt, especially as they seem to be involved in these senses. But etymologically it’s just a coincidence.
ashiepattle (noun)
Ireland, Scotland
From the days when real fires burned in homes – a child or domestic animal that lounges or works about the hearth, and thus gets covered with ash. The word is probably from ash-pit, with the -le adding a diminutive nuance – ‘little one’ – but with a tone of disgust rather than endearment. It seems to have been most often used in the very north of Scotland, in the Orkneys and Shetlands, and in Ireland it turns up as ashiepelt and ashypet. Cinderella was an ashypet.
attercop (noun)
Cheshire, Cumberland, Ireland, Lancashire, Northumberland, Scotland, Westmorland, Wiltshire, Yorkshire
An ill-natured or petulant person. An attercop was a spider, or a spider’s web. It’s an Old English word: attor was poison, and cop, from coppa, was a round head. Coppa itself seems to have been used alone for a spider, hence cop-web – or cobweb, as we say today. In the Middle Ages, attercop turns up applied to people, and seems to have been used in this way all over northern England and especially in Scotland. In Chapter 64 of Waverley, Walter Scott describes a character as ‘a fiery etter-cap’. In Lancashire, the word turns up as natter-crop, having stolen the n from a preceding an (see also amplush, nazzard).
awf (noun)
Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Scotland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Wales, Warwickshire, Yorkshire
Originally, an elf’s child, a changeling left by the fairies – thus any abnormal child, and so into dialect as an insult for anyone thought to be a fool or half-wit, equivalent to oaf in standard English. ‘Tha great awf’ would have been heard all over the Midlands and the North of England, with echoes in Wales and Scotland too. Perhaps it’s still heard. Awf is one of those punchy, monosyllabic words beloved of English speakers when they want to insult someone, and I’d be surprised if it had totally disappeared.
awvish (adjective or adverb)
Cheshire, Derbyshire, Durham, Lancashire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire
Slightly unwell, out of sorts. From Yorkshire: ‘I feel myself queer and awvish’. And in a related sense, we see it meaning ‘reluctant’ or ‘undecided’: one might be very awvish about doing something. In Lancashire, if you were being really perverse, you could be accused of awvishness. The awf element is probably a pronunciation variant of half. You had to watch the context carefully, as there was another awvish around, meaning ‘silly’ or ‘mischievous’. From Cheshire: ‘He’s so awvish when he’s in drink’. From Lancashire: ‘Keep out of his road, aw tell thi; he’s an awvish nowty felly’. That had a different origin, from elf.