C

cabby (adjective)

Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Somerset

Sticky, dirty, muddy. From Devon: ‘The road’s cruel cabby after the rain’. But it could also be used for the weather itself, especially if humid and clammy: ‘A proper cabby day’. In Cornwall, anything untidy could be described as cabby, as could a clumsy person. A very useful word, in short, from cab, meaning ‘a sticky mess’.

cabobble (verb)

Cornwall, Norfolk, Suffolk

To mystify, puzzle, confuse. From Cornwall: ‘’T’ull niver do for ee to try to cabobble Uncle Zibidee’. It’s probably a jocular coinage that caught on – as with some other words for mental states that express the notion of disturbance by using the ‘movement’ suggested by bob, such as discombobulate.

cackle-stomached (adjective)

Worcestershire

Squeamish, over-particular, having an easily disgusted stomach. ‘Er be a bit cackle-stomached’. The cackle part at first seems unusual, as it normally expresses bird noises or human laughter; but several dialects used it in the sense of ‘chattering’ or ‘gabbling’, which could easily describe a very noisy stomach, and thus the associated temperament.

cadgy (adjective or adverb)

Ireland, Northumberland, Scotland, Yorkshire

In good spirits, cheerful. The word appears in a variety of spellings, such as cadgie, cagie, and kedgy, and was very widely used in Scotland. From Ayrshire: ‘The old man, cagie with the drink he had gotten, sang like a daft man’. In East Anglia it appears as kedgy. Its origin is unknown, but a verb of dynamic action, such as catch, could have had an influence.

cag-mag or keg-meg (noun or verb)

Cheshire, Devon, Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Suffolk, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire

Chatter, gossip; grumble, quarrel; practical joke, mischief. This curious compound probably started out as a shortened form of cackle, which was then echoed with a nonsense second element, as in super-duper. People must have liked the sound of it, as it developed a remarkable range of senses and came to be used all over the country. Apart from the ‘chattering’ meanings, it was also used for tough meat, unwholesome food, loitering about, and simpletons. You really had to take note of the context to be sure you understood it correctly. From Devon: ‘He’s always up to some cag-mag or t’other’ – that must be the ‘mischief’ sense. From Worcestershire: ‘them two owd [old] critters upsta’rs a cagmaggin’ like thaay allus [always] be’ – that sounds like quarrelling. From Shropshire: ‘I conna ate [can’t eat] sich cag mag as that; it met [might] do fur a dog, but it inna fit for a Christian’ – definitely bad meat.

camsteery (adjective)

Northumberland, Scotland, Sussex

Wild, unmanageable, obstinate. This is cam in the sense of ‘bent from the straight’, ‘crooked’ and steer meaning ‘guide’. Horses are camsteery, but so are people. From Berwickshire: ‘He had a wild, camstary pony’. From Perthshire: ‘The’ll aye be some camsteary craturs in the warld’. And from Fife, a truly remarkable coinage, presumably expressing a particularly forceful degree of camsteeriness: camstroudgeous.

cank (adjective or noun)

Bedfordshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Wales, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire

Cank is one of those words that turns up all over the country with wildly diverse meanings, but often to do with chattering or gossiping. As with cag-mag, there must surely be a phonetic echo of cackle lying behind it. In Lancashire, a good place to chat in was called a canking-pleck. In some areas the word could also describe someone who made no noise at all (‘dumb’) or who was in a bad mood – though with such a meaning it could easily be showing the influence of canker. From Shropshire: ‘I toud ’er a bit o’ my mind, an’ ’er ’uff’d an’ ding’d an’ went off in a fine cank’.

capadocious (adjective)

Devon, Yorkshire

Splendid, excellent. From Devon: ‘I tellee I’ve a-had a capadocious dinner’. It turns up as capadosha in Yorkshire. The origin is unclear: it sounds like a blend of cap (something that can’t be surpassed, as in ‘That caps everything’) with an -ous ending (meaning ‘full of’, as in ferocious), but where the medial d comes from is a puzzle. There’s an echo of delicious (and Mary Poppins – supercallifragilisticexpialidocious).

cataclue (noun)

Orkney and Shetland Isles

A number of people running in disorder and impeding each other. There is a link with cats, but not the one that immediately comes to mind. We need to know that cat’s clover was used in this part of Scotland as one of the many folk names of bird’s-foot trefoil – a flowering plant that rapidly spreads in all directions, like clover. Look at a field with bird’s-foot trefoil all over it, and the association is easy to see.

cattie-bargle (noun)

Scotland

A noisy, angry quarrel among children, and among adults behaving in a childish way. Cattie-wurrie had a similar use. Caterwaul – from the wailing of cats on heat – is the word whose form comes closest in general colloquial English. In some dialects, such as Yorkshire, caterwauling described any man who went out courting at night, whether he howled or not.

caw-magging (adjective)

Northamptonshire

Idle, lazy, gaping. There was something about the sound of caw that made it often used to describe people in negative ways. The cry of rooks, crows, and other harsh-sounding birds has been applied to human talk in a contemptuous way since at least the sixteenth century, so it’s hardly surprising to see it used for other aspects of behaviour. We find cawney in Berkshire for a very stupid person; cawking in Gloucestershire for someone who was awkward or gawky.

ceffle (verb)

Lancashire

To cough slightly and sharply; pronounced ‘ke-full’. Given the many kinds of cough people are plagued with, it’s strange that English hasn’t developed a fuller vocabulary for the condition. Ceffle is an exception. There’s a similar word in Dutch, where keffen means ‘yelp’ (like a fox or dog).

certy (adjective)

Somerset

Obstinate, self-willed; pronounced ‘sir-ty’. ‘She war so certy and positive like, there war no sayin’ nothin’ to ’er’. It’s a shortened form of certain, and a natural development of meaning from its sense of ‘resolved, determined’.

chaffering (noun)

Cornwall, Cumberland, Kent, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, London, Scotland, Westmorland, Yorkshire

Haggling over a bargain. From Lancashire: ‘Don’t waste no more time in chaffering’. Etymologically, it means ‘sale’ (chap, as in the old word for a merchant, chapman) and ‘going’ (as in faring). But its dialect sense must also have benefited from the unrelated word chaffer, meaning ‘banter’. If you chaff someone, you’re using provoking language, but in a light-hearted way.

chamble or chomble (verb)

Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Suffolk, Warwickshire

To chew into small bits; gnaw, nibble. It’s part of a family of ch- words all reflecting the action of chewing – such as the widely used chaw, as well as chavel, chavver, chark, chiggle, chobble, champ and chomp. From Warwickshire: ‘I don’t wonder at his being badly; he bolts his meat and never half chombles it’.

chang (noun or verb)

Cumberland, Lancashire, Scotland, Westmorland

A loud, confused noise; noisy gossip. An echoic word, reflecting sounds heard also in clang and bang. From Westmorland: ‘Yah couldn’t hear yer aansell speeak fer udder folkses chang’. It wasn’t restricted to the human voice: musicians could make a chang; so could dogs.

cheeping-merry (adjective)

Lancashire

Half-drunk, elevated. Of the hundreds of words for being tipsy in English, this must surely be one of the happiest.

chice or jice (noun)

Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk

A small quantity or portion of anything. From Essex: ‘Just a little chice more salt’. The same notion turns up in Ireland as chi: ‘A chi of barach [barley]’. The etymology is unclear, but it may be a version of chiche, which came into English from French in the Middle Ages, with the meaning of ‘sparing’ or ‘parsimonious’.

chilth (noun)

Cornwall

The chilliness of the atmosphere – presumably opposed to warmth. ‘I cumd home early to avoid the chilth’. The -th ending, making nouns from verbs (as in growth) or adjectives (as in truth), is rare in English, but it nonetheless carries a certain appeal, as it’s used in playful formations, such as coolth. There are other examples below (dryth, feelth, sidth).

chocketty (adjective)

Surrey

Of a bad cold: affecting the throat. The source is probably choke, a similar development being seen in chock-full – ‘full to the point of choking’. But several dialects, especially in the West Country, called molar teeth chock-teeth, where chock here is a variant of cheek – the teeth closest to the cheeks. And chock was also used in some places to mean the flesh around the jaws – the chops. Whatever the source, chocketty must have been a useful addition to the very limited vocabulary English has for describing physical symptoms (see also ceffle) – as anyone knows who has tried to explain to a doctor exactly how they are feeling.

chollous (adjective)

Lincolnshire, Yorkshire

Of persons: harsh, stern, irritable. Of weather: cold, bleak. From Yorkshire: ‘He’s a nasty chollous sooat of a chap’. ‘T’wind’s varry chollous’. The applications of this word were diverse. Apples could also be chollous (sour), as could some medicines. And soil could be chollous (difficult to work), as could roads (with a poor surface). The source of all these is a familiar word: churlish.

chorp (verb)

Scotland

To emit a creaking sound. From Lothian: ‘My shoon [shoes] are chorpin’ – because of water getting into them. It’s difficult to think of an echoic form that exactly reflects the sound made when walking in waterlogged footwear, but this isn’t far off.

clabber (noun)

Cumberland, Ireland, Scotland

Soft, sticky mud. In Sidney Gilpin’s Songs and Ballads of Cumberland (1866) there’s a poem called ‘The Raffles Merry Neet’, in which a landlord gets into such a rage over the way his tavern has been treated that the merrymakers ‘fain wad [would] ha’ dabb’d him wi’ clabber’ – but don’t dare to. It’s originally a Gaelic word: clabar, ‘mud’.

click-ma-doodle (adjective or noun)

Devon

A badly finished piece of work. ‘A poor click-ma-doodle job’. This is click in the sense of something happening ‘on and off’ – heard also in clicker for a chronic invalid, whose illness is intermittent. It’s reinforced by doodle, which turns up in various words expressing the idea of ‘foolishness’ (such as fopdoodle and monkey-doodle). And there’s doubtless a link with click-handed for a left-handed person.

cloffin (verb)

Scotland

The act of sitting idle by the fire ( just as an ashiepattle does – see above). The origin isn’t clear, but there could be a link with a cloff, used in the North of England and Scotland to describe the fork of a tree (the cleft) where the branch joins (sits idly by?) the trunk.

cock-throppled (adjective)

Cumberland, Westmorland

Having a well-developed Adam’s apple. Thropple was an old word for a throat or neck, and presumably the distinctive throat of a rooster motivated the comparison. In the Lakes area this was then applied figuratively when making a fence: if some branches were laid in to fill up a gap and some of them stuck upwards, the fence was said to be cock-throppled.

cogglety (adjective)

Ireland, Northumberland, Westmorland, Yorkshire

Shaky, unsteady. From Westmorland: a man makes a pile of stones, ‘but they war varra coglety to clim ower’. Coggle was widely used in Scotland and the North of England to mean ‘move unsteadily’. It’s probably a word where the sound echoes the sense, like jiggle and joggle.

cognost (verb)

Scotland

To sit close together and plot some harmless mischief. ‘Look at them two cognostin’. This is a rare example of a technical legal expression entering everyday conversation, but in an adapted sense. To cognosce in Scottish law was to carry out an investigation in order to reach a legal decision. The same Latin source turns up in take cognizance of.

condiddle or kindiddle (verb)

Cornwall, Devon, Scotland, Somerset

Entice, take away clandestinely. From Cornwall: ‘You’m like Eve in the garden. She was kindiddled and did eat’. There is a link with the general colloquial use of diddle, ‘cheat’. The source may be an Old English verb meaning ‘deceive’, but a playful origin (as with doodle and doddle) can’t be ruled out.

confloption (noun)

Cornwall, Norfolk, Suffolk

Flurry, confusion. From Norfolk: ‘I’m all in a confloption’. The source is probably flap rather than flop – as when one is in a flap – with the other elements added playfully, based on similar-sounding words, such as confusion.

coppish (noun)

Wales

The part of the trousers that buttons in front. From Glamorgan, a contributor soberly comments: ‘In use among the lower orders at Merthyr Tydvil’. It is a linguistic memory of the codpiece, the appendage at the front of male hose or breeches, often referred to in sixteenth-century Elizabethan drama. In Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, Berowne, newly fallen in love, calls Cupid the ‘king of codpieces’.

corrosy (noun)

Cornwall, Devon

An old grudge handed down from father to son; an annoyance. It appears in a variety of spellings, but all reflect the source word, corrosive. From Cornwall: ‘She’ll never bear a coresy against anybody for long’.

craichy (adjective)

Cheshire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire

Of a person: ailing, shaky. Of a house: dilapidated. From Staffordshire: ‘I thought he’d goo off this winter, he’s bin very craichy for a good while’. From Shropshire: ‘a terrible craitchy owd ’ouse’. It’s an adaptation of creaky.

cramble or crammle (verb)

Cheshire, Cornwall, Cumberland, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Westmorland, Yorkshire

To walk with difficulty, hobble along stiffly. From Yorkshire: ‘Poor awd man, he can hardly crammle’. It belongs with a group of words where the primary meaning was to do with pressing or squeezing, such as cram, cramp, and crumple, and it prompted a number of derived expressions. For instance, if you were walking as if with sore feet, you were going cramble-toes.

crimpledy (adverb)

Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire

Totteringly, lamely. From Worcestershire: ‘He noticed how crimpledy she walked’. The associated verb is to crimple, which meant ‘hobble, limp’ as well as ‘wrinkle, shrivel up’. Clearly, there’s an association with crumple, but the vowel quality makes a big difference. If you were to crumple a piece of paper, you would crush it without taking any particular care; but if you crimpled it, the implication is that you would be handling it with a certain amount of finesse. Probably a similar nuance distinguished walking crimpledy as opposed to crumpledy – you would be much more bent and unsteady if you were the latter.

cronk (verb)

Cumberland, Nottinghamshire, Westmorland, Yorkshire

Crouch, sit huddled up. From Yorkshire: ‘Miners and colliers will cronk daan i’ th’ cabin for a taum [time], when they come aat o’ th’ pit’. It also had a less favourable meaning: ‘lounge, sit about gossiping’. The Penrith Observer in 1897 was in no doubt: ‘Cronkin’ about a public house is a bad sign’.

crottle (noun)

Cumberland, Durham, Northumberland, Scotland, Westmorland, Yorkshire

Fragment, crumb. From Renfrewshire: ‘Lay on twa-three crottils on the fire’. The word derives from crot, a Middle English word meaning ‘particle, bit’. Earlier history is unclear, but it sounds like an echoic word, with crittle a variant form.

crumpsy (adjective)

Cheshire

Ill-tempered, cross. ‘Yo bin very crumpsy this mornin’. There’s an obvious phonetic echo of grumpy, and thus of grunt, which seems to be the source of this family of words. Crump was widely used across the North of England and into Scotland in the same sense. The -sy ending adds a tone of mocking contempt, as with boundsy (see above) and tipsy.

cumpuffled (adjective)

Northamptonshire

Confused, bewildered. ‘I was so cumpuffled I didn’t know what I was about’. Using puff to describe the way we can push out the cheeks to express frustration has been in English a long time, from at least the fifteenth century. The cum part is an adaptation of com-, a prefix often used to intensify a meaning – ‘completely puffled’.

curglaff (noun)

Scotland

The shock felt in bathing at the first plunge into cold water – and thus also panic-struck. In a Banffshire poem, a man is described as ‘Curgloft, confounded . . .’ Several words beginning with gl- refer to something happening quickly, as in glimpse. In Scotland, a gloff was a sudden fright. It’s here intensified by the use of cur-, a prefix from Gaelic meaning ‘utterly’. We see it again in kerfuffle, ‘disorder’ – originally curfuffle.

cusnation or cussnation (adjective or noun)

Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Wiltshire

An expletive – a euphemistic blend of cuss (‘curse’) and damnation. From Wiltshire: ‘Don’t you be took in by that cusnation old rascal’.