Old British dialect words...

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).
 
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."
 
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!)
 
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.
Click to expand...

See, I can confirm that I definitively used that as a kid in the 70s - Clarty.... a right Gallus word.
 
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.
 
sPINKIE-DEN.!* dISTURBETH me NoT, I fain woold lae dewn in ma SpinKie-Den. Och, ach, argh, ecK***
 
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.)
 
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.
 
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? :)
 
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.
 
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.
 
I heard someone say 'soft as clarts' today. Wasn't anybody local.
 
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.
Click to expand...

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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