# Old British dialect words...



## Venusian Broon (Nov 13, 2014)

...to try and re-introduce into modern conversation.

To tell you the truth, even to me, a Brit with loads of experience of all sorts of dialect, these look made up. Perhaps Clomph rings a bell...

http://mentalfloss.com/article/59924/50-old-british-dialect-words-incorporate-conversation

Well if true I think I'm an expert in giving Crambo-clinks


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## HareBrain (Nov 13, 2014)

Are those the ones that didn't quite make it into The Meaning of Liff?


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## Ursa major (Nov 13, 2014)

Venusian Broon said:


> these look made up


So not at all like all our other words, then. 


But I know what you mean. 

​


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 13, 2014)

*Clomph* seems similar to Clomp which we use.
*Unchancy* I've heard (not lately)

None of the others ring a bell. But we use words from where we grew up not known to locals ... Or recognised as corrupt Irish , even though we never knew it was Irish, e.g.:
Gansey = Pullover, jumper (From Gaelic for pullover)
Shuch or Shuck  = Ditch   (From Gaelic for ditch)
Brogues = posh men's dress shoes with overlaid leather with holes. (From Gaelic for shoes).


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## Teresa Edgerton (Nov 13, 2014)

Unchancy I knew ... I'm sure I've used it more than a few times myself.  Nipperkin I've seen in a book before, but applied to a small boy, probably being used as slang like "little squirt" (which those of you in the UK may not be familiar with ... or anyone born after 1950, for that matter).  I didn't know what nipperkin really meant.  From context, I thought it was just another way of saying "little nipper."


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## The Judge (Nov 13, 2014)

I also knew of unchancy, and I must have read the same book as Teresa, as I also thought nipperkin was a young lad.  Nipper is still used like that, of course (or was when I was young... um... that might not be quite the endorsement I thought it might be...) and "kin" was often used as a diminutive, as in Peterkin.  

Is "little squirt" an Americanism, then?  I'm sure I heard it as a child.

One of the few dialect words I grew up with was "snicket" which Collins online dictionary defines as _(Northern England, dialect) a passageway between walls or fences_.  We lived in Leicester, which isn't usually described as Northern, and it, and "jitty" -- though that might have been a Kentish word of my mother's -- referred to the enclosed passages which ran though some rows of terraced houses which had streets front and back, the passages giving access to each street.  (How true it is, I don't know, but local legend has it that Daniel Lambert won a large bet thanks to one of these passages. A man, scornful of Lambert's physique, challenged him to a race, and said he would give Lambert a head start.  Lambert chose to run though a jitty where the man couldn't overtake him!)


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## Dave (Nov 13, 2014)

There are some great Geordie and Scots words that possibly have no direct translation. I particularly like the noun* Clarts* and adjective* Clarty.*


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## Venusian Broon (Nov 13, 2014)

Dave said:


> There are some great Geordie and Scots words that possibly have no direct translation. I particularly like the noun* Clarts* and adjective* Clarty.*



See, I can confirm that I definitively used that as a kid in the 70s - Clarty.... a right _Gallus_ word.


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## The Ace (Nov 13, 2014)

Doup-scud is a strange one.

Doup is - of course - the rear end of anything, but it seems to have fallen out of favour with reference to humans.  It's most commonly used these days to describe a cigarette-end.

Scud (strike a blow) is rarely used these days, but is still understood in some parts of Scotland.  I've never seen them joined with a hyphen, though.


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## J Riff (Nov 13, 2014)

sPINKIE-DEN.!*  dISTURBETH me NoT, I fain woold lae dewn in ma SpinKie-Den. Och, ach, argh, ecK***


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## Teresa Edgerton (Nov 14, 2014)

There are a lot of rural dialect words in *Cold Comfort Farm *... unfortunately (or fortunately, since she did a brilliant job of it) Stella Gibbons made about 99% of them up.  Although _mommet_ is apparently real.

(Alas, _mollicking_ is not.)


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## J Riff (Nov 14, 2014)

BTW, backstep to this fellow's page - Haggard Hawks, he has other goodies.


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## thaddeus6th (Nov 14, 2014)

One I found somewhere or other was flittermice, which is an old English word for bats.

And, of course, we still use Viking slang in Yorkshire. Lekking (or 'laking' as some seem to want to call it) meaning 'playing'. Not sure if it's Viking, but kecks means trousers.


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## Dave (Nov 14, 2014)

Kecks are underpants in the North East, but then pants are trousers in the US and in Canada too.


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## BAYLOR (Nov 16, 2014)

Then there is the word wonky. It seem to be coming into Use in the states  

And isn't the word Dude popular in the UK?


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## J Riff (Nov 16, 2014)

Don't lump in the 'canadian' langwidge with either trad variation of English, lest you've lived there in the last few decades. It bears little resemblance to anything I remember growing up. A large percentage of kids graduate school with English as their second language. The distinction between continental and N. Am English is far beyond their ability to distinguish anymore. There aren't Scots and Irish, OR Yanks wandering about influencing the lingo. You hear Chinese, Korean, Portugal, etc. far, far more than English. Just a fact. The English variations of these groups.... well you could write book about it.
I never hear interesting English anymore. Even the mayor here is on TV sayin' bumbaclot, and getting a laugh.
 English of any variety definitely on the way down here, worserer than any Amurican lemme tell ya Guvnor.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 17, 2014)

There was the Kenyan girl that moved to New York and was told off for speaking White. She objected to the idea that she ought to speak poorer English with more slang.


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## Stephen Palmer (Nov 19, 2014)

Cold Comfort Farm  - great use of language...


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## Mouse (Nov 19, 2014)

I heard someone say 'soft as clarts' today. Wasn't anybody local.


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## Ice fyre (Nov 21, 2014)

Dave said:


> There are some great Geordie and Scots words that possibly have no direct translation. I particularly like the noun* Clarts* and adjective* Clarty.*


 
If your a Clart, you are a dirty person with no regard for Personal hygene or manners. "The Clart hadnae washed his hands efter going fer a pee"
If you are Clarty you are dirty, you can be Clarty "He wis a clarty wee man, never washed himsel stank tae high heaveans" Clart is more or less dirty, but applied to mainly to people, but I have heard somethings described as being clarty.


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## Dave (Nov 21, 2014)

It may have a slightly different meaning South of the border as I've only heard it applied to that sticky kind of mud that gardeners know well and which gets everywhere. However, the Internet seems to think it is 'sticky mud mixed with horse manure', which is more in keeping with your 'lack of personal hygiene'.

Geordie and Scots have a lot of words that are clearly Viking in origin. _Hyem_ being Geordie for home, but also the same in Danish. _Bairn_ being a small child in Scots and Northern English, but also the same in old Norse and in Swedish a child is a _Barn_.


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## Gramm838 (Nov 22, 2014)

Dave said:


> There are some great Geordie and Scots words that possibly have no direct translation. I particularly like the noun* Clarts* and adjective* Clarty.*



Wye aye man, ganning for a plodge in the clarts (going for paddle in the mud, for those of you of a non-Geordie disposition)

There's a great word that is used exclusively in Geordie-land - 'gadje' - which is used to describe someone of advancing years (ie me)...I read somewhere this is a word brought to Britain by the Samartian cavalry in the Roman Army. 

And of course there's hyem (home), liggy (a marble)...


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## Dave (Nov 22, 2014)

_Gagje_ is a good word. I haven't heard that origin before.


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## Ice fyre (Nov 24, 2014)

There's a great word that is used exclusively in Geordie-land - 'gadje' - 

Gadgje is used here in Scotland, I think it used to denote a sharp customer, a bit of a lad.


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## Ray McCarthy (Nov 24, 2014)

Is it from Romany?


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## Venusian Broon (Nov 24, 2014)

Ray McCarthy said:


> Is it from Romany?



It doesn't say so. Here's a definition of gadge: http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/snd/gadge_n_v2, leader to gadger which I'm sure I've used. (I can't find a version spelled gadje)

(But just below it on the list on the right there's the term Gadgie where apparently has Romany origins)


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## Dave (Nov 24, 2014)

I certainly thought that a _Gadjy_ (however spelt*) was an older man, a man with some experience, a leader possibly, or a foreman or boss, but maybe a better translation would be an elder?

It does sound like the Romany origin is plausible.

* dialect words are rarely written but mainly spoken. Very few people wrote at all before printing and English words had several possible spellings. So there is nothing odd about different spellings.


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## Venusian Broon (Nov 24, 2014)

Dave said:


> I certainly thought that a _Gadjy_ (however spelt*) was an older man, a man with some experience, a leader possibly, or a foreman or boss, but maybe a better translation would be an elder?
> 
> It does sound like the Romany origin is plausible.
> 
> * dialect words are rarely written but mainly spoken. Very few people wrote at all before printing and English words had several possible spellings. So there is nothing odd about different spellings.



There's a large corpus of old Scots words that would be today called dialect there in literature - you know Rabbie Burns and all that that survived, well, to today really. And there has been a printing industry in Edinburgh for centuries (mostly religious polemics it seems for a lot of the time admitedly), that have thrived on at least partially on the Scottish dialects. I would hazard a guess that there were probably regional centres for printing in England, Wales and Ireland too - but probably the dominance of London and advantages of scale as it was really massive in book publishing could of pushed some of the old local centres out of existence (and hence made the language perhaps more uniform?). But I'm speculating.


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