It is generally supposed that the vocabulary of dialect-speaking people is very small; indeed, it has been stated as a scientific fact that the common rustic uses scarcely more than 300 words. The most cursory glance at the English Dialect Dictionary, however, will suffice to convince anybody that this statement is incorrect. The six volumes of this Dictionary contain in all over 5,000 pages, and the number of simple and compound words in the first volume (A-C) is 17,519; and from the careful statistics given of the contents of this volume, it may safely be inferred that the whole Dictionary contains over 100,000 words.

As may be expected, we find in this vocabulary an immense variety of terms or phrases for expressing one and the same idea. For instance, there are approximately 1,350 words meaning to give a person a thrashing, and an almost innumerable quantity meaning to die, and to get drunk. There are some 1,300 ways of telling a person he is a fool. A few names taken at random are: chuffin head, coof, gapus, gauvison, goostrumnoodle, Jerry pattick, mee-maw, ning-nang, nornigig, rockey-codlin, Sammy-suck-egg, snool, stooky, Tom-coddy, yawney, yonnack. A fine cumulative effect is produced by a few introductory adjectives, with or without a final pronoun, in such personal remarks as: Thoo goffeny goavey, it’s thoo at’s daft Watty; You drumble-drone, dunder-headed slinpole; Thah gert, gawmless, sackless, headed fooil thah. There are about 1,050 terms for a slattern, such as: daffock, dawps, drazzle-drozzle, flammakin, hagmahush, lirrox, mad Moll o’ the woods, mawkin, moggy, rubbacrock, slammock or slommocks, trail-tengs, trash-mire, wally-draigle.

Among animals possessing a large variety of names the smallest pig of a litter holds a very prominent place with over 120 titles to distinction, such as: Anthony-pig, cadme, Daniel, dilling (a very old word for darling, occurring in Cotgrave’s Dictionary and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy), greck, little Josey, Nicholas, nisgal, pedman, ritling, runt, squab, treseltrype, wrenock. That handsome bird the hickwall, or green woodpecker, Gecinus viridis, figures under almost every letter of the alphabet; whilst the sparrow and the stickleback also rank high on the list. Among flowers, the ox-eye daisy and the foxglove have the largest number of different names. The foxglove is called: fairy fingers, fairy glove, fairy petticoats, fairy thimbles, witches’ thimbles, bloody man’s fingers, dead man’s bells, flop-a-dock, poppy-dock, pop-guns, &c., &c. One would fain find in Thormantle, or Thor’s-mantle, a trace of ancient mythology, but the most probable explanation of the term is that it is a corruption of tormentil from Potentilla Tormentilla, a flower which shares with the foxglove the name Thor’s-mantle.

It would be an interesting experiment to try and trace out geographically the use of the various words denoting a stream of water: beck, burn, dike, sike, strype, water, &c., &c. The New English Dictionary tells us that beck is ‘the ordinary name in those parts of England from Lincolnshire to Cumberland which were occupied by the Danes and Norwegians’. Another authority, Mr. Oliver Heslop, says: ‘This term, which is found in Danish and Norwegian settlements in England, occurs about sixty-three times in the county of Durham. In Northumberland it is represented in the solitary case of the River Wansbeck, and in this it is questionable whether the second syllable is originally beck,’ and further: ‘The line dividing the more northern burn from the s.Dur. and Yks. beck is a sharp one. It runs along the ridge between Wear and Tees from Burnhope Seat eastwards to Paw Law Pike. The tributaries to the Wear, on the n. side of this ridge, are burns, and the similar affluents to the Tees, on its s. side, are becks.’ In Kettlethorpe church, in Lincolnshire, is an epitaph on a former Rector of the parish, the Rev. John Becke, who died in 1597:

Beck is a Norse word, O.N. bekkr, a brook, occurring already in Middle English, as, for instance, in Hampole’s Psalter, c. 1330: ‘Do til thaim as till iabin in the bek of cyson,’ Ps. lxxxii. 8. Burn is an English word, O.E. burna, burne, a brook, and is found in Sc. Irel. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Yks. Stf. Sike is also a native word, O.E. sic, a watercourse, which comes down further south to Lei. and Nhp. Strype is a purely Scotch name. Jamieson thus defines it: ‘A strype is distinguished from a burn. The gradation seems to be: watter, a river; burn, a brook; burnie, a small brook; strype, a rill of the smallest kind.’ Though a water means a river in Scotland, in England it more usually denotes a smaller stream. The term is found in Dur. Yks. and Lan., and is common in Som. and Dev. An amusing incident once occurred at a Village Penny Reading entertainment where one of the songs on the programme was the well-known ballad poem, On the Banks of Allan Water. The pathetic notes of the last lines:

had hardly died away when the audience burst into a roar of laughter. They had understood the climax to be some kind of practical joke played by the miller’s daughter: ‘There o’ corse [of course] lay she!’

Attempts have been made to show the geographical distribution of the words for girl, or young woman. Ellis states it roughly thus: ‘mauther in Norfolk, maid in the South, wench in no bad sense in the Midlands, and lass generally in the North, girl,’ he adds, ‘is rather an educated word.’ The word mawther occurs in the Promptorium Parvulorum (circa 1440), the compiler of which was a Norfolk man. Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) mentions it as one of the words ‘of common use in Norfolk, or peculiar to the East Angle countries’. It occurs in Ben Jonson’s Alchymist, 1610; and Tusser, who was an Essex man, uses it two or three times in his Fiue Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1580:

The word is used in Glo. Hrt. and Wil. besides East Anglia. At a trial once in Norfolk the Judge inquired who could give evidence of what had just been stated; the reply was: A mawther playing on a planchard [a girl playing on the floor]. The Judge, not being a native, was completely mystified. Maid is the equivalent used in Dor. Som. Dev. Cor. When a new baby arrives, the question as to its sex is always put thus: Is it a boy or a maid? A similar use is found in the Bible, cp. ‘If she bear a maid child,’ Leviticus xii. 5. In the sense of young woman, or girl, the word maid occurs frequently in the Authorized Version of the Bible, whereas the word girl only occurs twice; e.g. ‘The maid [Esther] was fair and beautiful,’ Esther ii. 7; ‘Can a maid forget her ornaments?’ Jeremiah ii. 32. The daughter of Jairus, aged twelve, is in St. Matthew ix. 24 ‘the maid’, though in St. Mark she is ‘the damsel’. Wyclif termed her ‘the wenche’, a term which occurs in the Authorized Version in 2 Samuel xvii. 17, ‘And a wench went and told them.’ In Yorkshire and Lancashire wench is a term of endearment; in Cheshire it is simply the feminine of lad; in Oxfordshire they summon cows with the cry: Come, wench, come, wench; in Gloucestershire the well-known rhyme runs:

It is to Gloucestershire also that belongs the story of the local preacher who declaimed with terrific fervour: There you go, you chaps and wenches, head over heels to hell, like zhip [sheep] drow a glat [a gap in a hedge]. The North-country lass may be of any age, though commonly she is a young girl. The word is often used as a term of address, e.g.

One of the most comprehensive terms of familiar address is the East Anglian bor, applied to persons of either sex and of all ages, e.g. Hullo, bor! where be you a’goin? The plural is together, e.g. Well, together, how are ye all? Bor is an old native word, O.E. bur, which we have in the literary language as the second element in neighbour. How convenient it would be if we could adopt bor into the upper circles of the spoken language, for use at those awkward moments when, after a lapse of years, we unexpectedly find ourselves face to face with an old acquaintance, whose name has slipped from our memories. How openly cordial we could be, and at the same time so comfortably ambiguous: And is it really you, bor? How glad I am to see you again! But if we were to attempt to lay a plundering hand on the dialects with intent to enrich our standard speech by handy and convenient dialect words, we should be embarrassed by the wealth before us. What literary word, for instance, conveys the full meaning of the common dialect term feckless (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. War.), the lineal descendant of Shakespeare’s effectless? It means: incapable, incompetent, without resource, shiftless, helpless, and a great deal more besides, all in a handy nutshell. There are scores of adjectives, the forceful individuality of which we instinctively feel, and yet find very hard to convey in the terms of a verbal definition. We are driven to string together inadequate synonyms, or pile up pedantic phrases. A feckless body we define as: a person incapable of any effective effort; waughy (n.Cy.), we say, is used in illness, nearly always during convalescence, to express the feebleness, shakiness, and light-headedness after confinement to bed. It also means weak in body, especially when accompanied by a tendency to faint, e.g. I felt that waffy, I should hev siled doon upo’ th’floor, if missis hedn’t gen me sum brandy. Chuff (n.Cy. n.Midl. Midl.) is proud, pleased, denoting a combination of fussiness and serene self-satisfaction. We certainly have here much meaning in little room, as Dr. Johnson found in the word shrew, which he defines as: ‘A peevish, malignant, clamorous, spiteful, vexatious, turbulent woman.’

A few words such as canny, dour, pawky, have gained a recognized position in the standard speech, through having been introduced by educated Scotchmen. Some of the meanings of canny are expressed in the adjective gradely, a word generally quoted as characteristic of the Lancashire dialect, in the phrase a gradely lass. It belongs, however, also to Cum. Wm. Yks. Chs. Stf. Der. Shr. In origin it is a form of graithly, a Scandinavian word, O.N. greiÐligr, ready, prompt, and it can mean: (1) respectable, honest, (2) handsome, comely, (3) friendly, kind, (4) clever, (5) having full possession of one’s senses, (6) genuine, good, (7) considerable, big. A similarly compact word in general dialect use throughout Scotland and England is jannock, or jonnock; like gradely, also of Scandinavian origin, cp. Norw. dial. jamn, even, level, of which jannock is apparently a derivative form. The commonest meaning is fair, honest, straight-forward: YÜ may trist she. I tellee ’er’s jonnick tÜ tha back-bone (Dev.). Another attractive adjective in general dialect use is peart, a delightful word, which positively sounds: brisk, lively, spirited, cheerful, in good health, sharp, and intelligent. It has nothing to do with pert either in form or meaning. It is used specially of persons just recovered from an illness, e.g. Pretty peart again now—but it may also be used of animals and plants. We may remark: Them onions look peart, in contemplating the onion-bed. A common proverbial saying in Cheshire is: Poor and peart like the parson’s pig, whereby hangs a tale. The proverb is traced back to the days when the parson had to take some at least of his tithe in kind, when the pig reserved for him was wont to be a small and thin one, and consequently specially brisk and active compared with the pigs that went to market. More obvious similes are: as peart as a lop [flea]; as peart as a pyet [magpie]; as peart as a cock-robin; and with a figurative touch: as peart as a spoon. Closely connected with the literary uncouth, is the widespread dialect adjective unkid. It looks at first sight like the poor relation from the country, clad in rough rustic garb, but as a matter of fact it is historically a perfectly correct form, cp. M.E. unkid, not made known, -kid = O.E. c?Ðed, p.p. of c?Ðan, to make known. Indeed our uncouth is less regularly developed in pronunciation. Unkid may be found in all the dialects in England and Ireland, meaning: (1) strange, unusual; (2) untidy, e.g. The missis took a dill a paayns uv our Becca, but ’er couldna larn ’er to be tidy. ’Er sims reg’lar unkid, ’er do (Wor.); (3) uncanny, horrid; (4) lonely, depressed; (5) cross, sulky; (6) stormy; (7) of the weather: close, sultry. Some of the terms for describing persons of sullen, ill-tempered, or peevish dispositions are worth quoting: e.g. cappernishious, crumpsy, frabby, glumpy—If he’s glumpy, let him glump—muggaty, perjinkety, snippety. To address a cantankerous person engaged in a quarrelsome discussion as ‘You nasty brabagious creature’ must give the speaker a pleasant sense of having said the right thing at the right moment.

Other very expressive adjectives are: dowly (Sc. Nhb. Dur. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan. Lin.), lonely, melancholy; of places: retired, lonesome, e.g. A desput dowly, deeathly spot t’won [live] in, an old word found in Middle English, cp. ‘He fell to Þe ground All dowly, for dole, in a dede swone,’ Destruction of Troy, c. 1400; gaumless (Yks. Nhb. Wm. Lan.), stupid, senseless, vacant, ignorant, without judgment, e.g. Well, if I ever did see annyb’dy so gaumless! Seems as if yo’d noo notion o’ nowt, cp. O.N. gaumr, heed, attention; perky, sharp, saucy, impudent, e.g. Sabina’s Bill is perkier then ony uther lad as I iver clapt eyes on; I sent him wo’d he wasn’t to mislest that theÄre maggit nest e’ my plantin’, an’ I gets wo’d back fra him as he’d consither it, bud if I’d send him sixpence he was sewer he wodn’t; skiddley (Som.), small, diminutive, used generally with little, to intensify or to add contempt, e.g. Her ax me nif I’d like vor to take ort; an’ I zaid, thanky mum, s’I; an’ then if her didn bring me out a little skiddley bit o’ bird’n cheese, ’bout ’nough to put in a rabin’s eye; ugsome (Sc. n.Cy.), frightful, horrible, a derivative of O.N. ugga, to fear, e.g. a ghastly wound is: an ugsome sair, and a savage bull may be said to have ‘leuk’t at us varry ugsomely’; wairsh (Sc. Irel. n.Cy. Midl. Dev.), tasteless, insipid, cp. ‘A kiss and a drink of water is but a wersh disjune,’ Ramsay, Proverbs, 1737, and ‘werysshe as meate that is nat well tastye, mal savourÉ’, Palsgrave, Lesclarcissement de la langue francoyse, 1530; wambly (Sc. Lan. Wil. Dev. Cor.), insecure, unsteady.

Some forceful adjectives have resulted from the simple addition of an ordinary suffix to an ordinary standard English word, e.g. dateless (Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. Lin.), stupified, foolish, disordered in mind, having the faculties failing through age, insensible, as from a blow, literally, without a date, unconscious of time; deedy (Sc. Yks. Midl. Hmp. Sus. Wil. Dor.), full of activity, industrious, painstaking, earnest, e.g. a deedy body, a practical person, an industrious worker. It was once a literary word, cp. ‘In a messenger sent is required ... that he be speedy, that he be heedy, and, as we say, that he be deedy,’ Adams, Lycanthropy, 1615; eyeable (Chs. n.Midl. Midl. Cor.), pleasing to the eye, sightly, as the man who was selling ready-made clothes in the market said of his stock-in-trade: There’s a many things that’s eyeable, but isn’t tryable, or buyable, but theÄse things is eyeable, an’ tryable, an’ buyable an’ all; hurryful (Shr.), quick, hasty, hurried, e.g. It inna the ’urriful sort o’ folk as bringen the most to pass, for they runnen about athout thar yed ooth ’em; easyful (w.Yks. Shr.), knowful (Yks.), yonderly (Lakel. Wm. Yks. Lan. Chs.), are good, homely substitutes for indolent, well-informed, absent-minded, literary adjectives, which by comparison with the dialect ones sound prosaic and harsh. Indeed, yonderly in particular, when applied to persons, is an untranslatable epithet, and yet one which exactly describes certain types of mind. It can also convey a sense of the pathetic, e.g.

Yonderish (Yks. Lan.), on the other hand, is not a friendly and gentle term, it can be even abusive, when used in speaking to persons who think themselves superior to other people, e.g. Theaw needsno’ be so yonderish, theaw’rt nowt ’at’s owt [thou art nothing that is anything]. Very expressive too are some of the participial adjectives, such as: gaustering (Chs. War. Yks. Lan. Lei. Lin.), blustering, bumptious, e.g. Sike a braungin’, gausterin’ taistrill [such a swaggering, bumptious, good-for-nothing rascal]; snazzling (Yks. of the wind or weather), cold, biting, bleak; to lead a threppoing, pungowing life (Chs.) means the sort of life where it is hard to make both ends meet, when one is puzzled how to get on, a hand to mouth sort of existence; all cottered into snocksnarls signifies in an entangled heap; a oondermoinded nassty trick is a nicely explicit phrase; so is the sentence: I was so cumpuffled I didn’t know what I was about; throssan-, or thrussen-up (Lakel. Cum. Wm. Yks. Lan.)—literally, thrust-up—means conceited, forward. A Yorkshire woman, when on a visit to her son in the South, was asked by a lady in rather a patronizing manner, what she thought of South-country ladies. She replied: Wah, to tel ye t’onist triuth, the’r nowt bud stuk-up thrussen-up things wi’ nowt mich abaht ’em, the’r all ahtside.

It is not easy to make a typical selection of what may be called expressive words, partly because the choice is so very wide, and partly because one is apt to exaggerate the merits of words which appeal to one personally, and so one is not an impartial judge. There are certain quaint dialect words which bring back to one’s mind the days of one’s childhood, the old family nurse, or the gardener who reigned supreme in the garden of long ago, and so for old sake’s sake these words express more than meets the ear of a stranger. Here, however, is a sample of verbs of various kinds: brevit (gen. use in Midl. counties), to search, ransack, &c., as in the following account of a visit to the dentist: Soo the doctor, a lukes at my tooth a bit, an’ begins a-brevetin’ abaout among his bench o’ tules, an’ a says, tell ye what Joo, a says, yo’ mut grin an’ aboide this turn. Soo ah says, ah cain’t grin if ye doon’t lave me noo tooshes, ah says. Soo a says, Ah, but yo’ can Joo, a says, yo’ can grin o’ the wrong soide; cabobble (e.An. Cor.), to mystify, puzzle, confuse, e.g. You wholly cabobble me; chunner (Sc. Yks. Lan. Chs. Der. War. Shr.), to grumble, mutter, murmur. A clergyman, asking an infirm old woman how she was, received as an answer: I goes on chunner, chunner, chunner. Whereupon he proceeded to give her a homily showing how wrong it was to be discontented, when he was stopped by the old woman: Bless you, Parson, it’s not me that chunners, it’s my innards! Fratch (n.counties), to quarrel, dispute, as for example, when a loud noise of wrangling voices is heard, some one may suggest that it is two women fratching, or forty men fighting; glox (Hmp. Wil.), of liquids: to roll about, make a gurgling sound when shaken inside a vessel; goggaz (Chs.), to stare, e.g. What a’t tha goggazin’ at naÏ? Tha’s noo moor manners abaÏt thee till if tha’d bin born in a wood; guggle (various dialects), to gurgle, make a bubbling sound, which looks at first sight like a made-up word, but which was known to Cotgrave, and to Dr. Johnson, who has: ‘To Guggle. v.n. [gorgoliare, Italian] To sound as water running with intermissions out of a narrow mouthed vessel’; gnatter, natter (Sc. and n.counties), to grumble, complain, fret, e.g. Natterin’ Nan, which is the title of the most famous of Ben Preston’s dialect poems: