(noun) - The tendon of the neck of cattle or sheep. Figuratively, and perhaps ludicrously, transferred to the punishment of the juggs, or pillory. --John Jamieson's Scottish Etymological Dictionary, 1808
(noun) - Formerly all English dinners commenced with pudding, as they still do in remote districts. Hence, pudding-time meant dinner time. A foreigner who in the seventeenth century visited England and published his experiences in 1698 speaks enthusiastically of English puddings: "Oh what an excellent thing is an English pudding! To come at pudding-time is a proverbial phrase meaning to come at the happiest moment in the world. Make a pudding for an Englishman and you will regale him." --Henry Reddall's Fact, Fancy, and Fable, 1889
(noun) - (1) The use of ambiguous expressions. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895 (2) The use of indeterminate expressions; discourse of doubtful meaning. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 (3) Double-speaking. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
(noun) - (1) A ring made of the hinge of a coffin is supposed to have the virtue of preventing the cramp. --Francis Grose's Provincial Glossary, 1787 (2) Formerly, rings made from the hinges of coffins were worn as charms for the cure of fits, or for the prevention of cramp or even rheumatism. The superstition continues, though the metal is of necessity changed, few coffins having now hinges of silver. --John Harland and T.T. Wilkinson's Lancashire Folklore, 1867 (3) When a grave was reopened, people stripped a piece of metal from an old coffin. It was cut in circular shape, a hole was bored in it, and the amulet was worn suspended from a ribbon round the neck. --Marie Trevelyan's Folklore of Wales, 1909
(adjective) - Sheep's-eyed; sidelong; shy; used also when a person squints a little. Perhaps the word is cannywest, for canny hinny, in some parts, means a sly person. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883
(noun) - A medicine which when applied to the mucous membrane of the nose increases the natural secretions and produces sneezing. Having the action of an errhine. --Sydenham Society's Lexicon of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1897
(verb) - The knocker-up carries a long pole with which he taps at the bedroom windows of his clients. --Thomas Darlington's Folk-Speech of Cheshire, 1887
(noun) - The phrase, "the hammer of it," means the long and short of it. "That's about the hammer of it," concludes an argument or explanation. --Edward Gepp's Essex Dialect Dictionary, 1923
(noun) - (1) A cavity in a rock; a cave, a hollow; adaptation of Cornish mining term vooga; hence, vuggy, full of cavities. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1928 (2) Vughy rock, a stratum of cellular structure, or one containing many cavities. --William Gresley's Glossary of Terms Used in Coal Mining, 1883
(noun) - The maid who attends the kimmer, or matron who has the charge of the infant at kimmerings, or baptisms; who lifts the babe into the arms of its father to receive the sprinkling of salvation. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
(verb) - (1) To be a busybody or eavesdropper. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905 (2) To collect and retail scandal. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
(noun) - A vacillation or wavering in decision; formed on Latin volo, I am willing, and nolo, I am unwilling. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1929
(noun) - An eyeglass. This was applied to the old single eyeglass, which was not stuck in the eye, as now, but was held in the hand. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
Fipple (noun) - (1) The underlip. "See how he hangs his fipple." --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) The underlip in men and animals, when it hangs down large and loose. "To hang one's fipple," to look disappointed, discontented, or sulky; also, to weep. --John Jamieson's Scottish Etymological Dictionary, 1808
(noun) - A fellow who grumpfs at all genuine sports and sits as sour as the devil when all around him are joyous. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
(noun) - (1) A shade of brown of the color of a faded leaf. Anglicised as feulemort, fillamort, filemot, phillemot, and philomot. French, literally "dead leaf." --C.A.M. Fennell's The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964 (2) To make a countryman understand what feuillemorte colour signifies it might suffice to tell him, 'tis the colour of withered leaves falling in Autumn. --John Locke's Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, 1690
(noun) - A person who stands upon a cliff or elevated part of the seacoast in the time of the herring fishery to point out to the fishermen by signs the course of the shoals of fish. From French conduire to conduct, guide. -- Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
(noun) - An officer of the royal household whose business is to see the king's lodging furnished with gambling-related tables, chairs, stools and firing, and to decide disputes arising at cards, dice, bowling, &c. --Ephraim Chambers' Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 1728
In 1592, an archery custom was begun by the founder of the Harrow School in England. Boys competed for a silver arrow, the winner being honored at a school dance that concluded the festivities. The "Harrow shootings" were discontinued in 1771 as the headmaster grew intolerant of the many exemptions from school attendance by the competitors. Beyond this, W. & R. Chambers' Book of Days (1864) reported, "He also observed, as other masters had before him, that the contest usually brought down a band of profligate and disorderly persons from the metropolis, to the demoralisation of the village."
(noun) - This was a term in use with the Anglo-Saxons from its necessity in archery, and it is now called the trigger-finger, from its equal importance in modern fire-arms. The mutilation of this member was always a most punishable offence, for which the laws of King Alfred inflicted a penalty of fifteen shillings, which at that time probably was a sum beyond the bowman's means. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word Book, 1867
(noun) - (1) The behavior and manners of an alderman. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850 (2) In humorous imitation of humanity. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
(noun) - Valour. Orpinn is the participle of verpa, to warp or throw in Old Norse. Hence, orped comes to signify "headlong, daring, or valorous." Pronounced OR-ped-ship. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863
Cleiking the Devil - During the third week of August, traditional games, a bonfire in which the devil is burned in effigy, and the symbolic release of a flock of pigeons by St. Ronan make up part of the Cleikum ceremony, which was founded in the 1820s in Innerleithen, Peeblesshire, Scotland, by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, poet James Hogg, and John Lockhart. In this carryover of the St. Ronan Border Games, a boy is chosen to impersonate seventh-century monk St. Ronan, who is remembered for having bested the devil by educating the laity. An elaborate ritual depicts the saint using his crozier, a bishop's curved staff, to grab a boy who represents the cloven-hoofed prince of darkness, an action known locally as "cleiking." Cleik has been used in a number of related Scottish idioms, such as cleik the cunyie, to lay hold of money, and cleik-in-the-back, back pain that feels like a hook catching one.
(adjective) - Having hoofs that are whole, or not cloven. A horse is a solidungulous animal. From Latin solidus, solid, and ungula, hoof. --Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828
(noun) - (1) A hole in a fence, or passage for hares or sheep; Craven. --John Walker's Dictionary of the English Language, 1835 (2) Related to smuce, a hole which rabbits make through a hedge. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883
(adjective) - Burnt, scorched; hot and fiery. From Latin ad, to, and ustus, burnt. Hence adustible, that may be burnt up, and adustion, the act of burning, scorching. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
(noun) - (1) A sudden motion of air, no other way perceptible but by its whirling up the dust on a dry road in perfectly calm weather, resembling a water-spout. --John Walker's Dictionary of the English Language, 1835 (2) Occasionally, a rodges-blast sweeps like a whirlwind over the marsh, wrecking windmills. --G.C. Davies' Norfolk Broads, 1890
(noun) - In many of our large towns, the bell rung at ten o'clock at night is called Lourie, lang Lourie, or big Lourie. Its call is still at least acknowledged to be the signal for respectable people to retire homeward from calls and amusements. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
(noun) - A stench; obscurity in the air arising from smoke, fog, or dust. To smeech, to make a stink with the snuff of a candle. Smeegy, tainted, ill-smelling. Connected with Anglo-Saxon smec, smic, smoke; Bavarian schmecken, to smell, and thence schmecker, the nose. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878
(noun) - (1) Divination by a broiled asse's head. --Elisha Coles' English Dictionary, 1713 (2) Cephaleonomancy, or the art of divination by an ass' head, is a species of art magic which still flourishes in England. --Robert Southey's Letters From England, 1807
(noun) - Neurosthenia debilitas nervosa. Debility or impaired activity of the nerves. From Greek roots meaning "a nerve" and "disability." --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844
(noun) - (1) Gold dissolved and mixed with oil of rosemary to be drank. --John Coxe's Medical Dictionary, 1817 (2) Among chymists apothecaries, a rich cordial liquor with pieces of gold leaf in it. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
(pl. noun) - (1) Persons who ride fast on horseback, and send the wash, or dubs, about on both sides of the way. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) Dub-skelper, one who makes his way with such expedition as not to regard the road he takes, whether it be clean or foul; used contemptuously for a rambling fellow. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
(verb) - (1) To cease from boasting. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922 (2) Sing small is another phrase which carelessness in pronunciation has changed from the original. The phrase should be "sink small," to be lowered in the estimation of one's fellows. --Edwin Radford's Encyclopaedia of Phrases and Origins, 1945
(verb) - To go fast, in allusion to the rapid motion of a horse on a muddy road, and to the fondness of Americans for fast driving. --Sylva Clapin's Dictionary of Americanisms, 1902
(noun) - (1) A schoolmaster, with a play on the word phlebotomist, a bloodletter. --John Farmer and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1904 (2) A pedantical whip-arse. --Randle Cotgrave's Dictionary of the French and English Tongues, 1611
(noun) - (1) A boat used in pioneer times by a family in emigrating down rivers, especially the Ohio and Mississippi. --Mitford Mathews' Dictionary of Americanisms, 1956 (2) The crafts are square arks nine or ten feet wide, and varying in length as occasion may require. They are roofed all over, except a portion of the fore part, where two persons row. --James Flint's Letters From America, 1822
(adjective) - Slippery. Not an abbreviation, but a pure Saxon word, and as shown by Mr. Todd, of Old English usage, not withstanding which the great lexicographer characterized it as a barbarous provincial term, from slip. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
(adjective) - Showy, flattering. It is probable that when this word was first adopted it was pronounced as close to the French gentil as possible, but as we have no letter in our language equivalent to the French soft g, and as the nasal vowel en, when not followed by hard g, c, or k, is not to be pronounced by a mere English speaker, it is no wonder that the word was anglisized in its sound, as well as in its orthography. --John Walker's Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, 1835
(noun) - In some counties, when a man has been guilty of inflicting personal chastisement upon his wife, it was customary for his neighbours to empty a sack or two of chaff in front of the offender's door to signify that thrashing had been done there. This is called chaffing. --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882
(noun) - (1) An acid liquor prepared from very sour grapes or crabapples. It is principally used in culinary preparations, although occasionally an ingredient in medicinal compounds. --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844 (2) From French verd, green, and jus, juice; used in sauces, ragouts, and the like. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871
(adjective) - At present, offensive and moving disgust; but once, noxious and actually hurtful. Thus, a skunk would be noisome now, a tiger was noisome then. --Richard Chenevix Trench's Select Glossary, 1859
(noun) - A kind of beer between table-beer and ale, formerly drunk by the middling classes, which seems to have been thus denominated because it was customary to hand it round in a little cap. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
(verb) - To blind; to hoodwink. Refashioned as inveigle; from French aveugler. --C.A.M. Fennell's The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964
(adjective) - It was an ancient notion that men in their cups exhibited the vicious qualities of beasts. Thomas Nashe c. 1600 describes seven kinds of drunkards: "The ape-drunk, who leaps and sings; the lion-drunk, who is quarrelsome; the swine-drunk, who is sleepy and puking; the sheep-drunk, wise in his own conceit but unable to speak; the martin-drunk, who drinks himself sober again; the goat-drunk, who is lascivious; and the fox-drunk, who is crafty." --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
(adjective) - Inverted or confused. Bells are "rung awk" to give alarm of fire. Ray's South and East Country Words 1691 says that awkward is opposed to toward. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
(adverb) - A familiar and very old phrase denoting to quarrel or fight. It alludes to the practice of dogs which, when fighting, seize each other by the ears. --John Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms 1849
(adjective/noun) - (1) All of a heap; generally used of entangled thread. --Walter Skeat's Specimens of English Dialects: Westmorland, 1879 (2) Overtwisted thread, or worsted, run into lumps. The English drove the variant forms, snigsnarls, snicksnarls, and snogsnarls to snocksnarls. --C. Clough Robinson's Glossary of Mid-Yorkshire, 1876
(noun) - In most country districts, a certain distance is laid out by custom within which persons are bidden from each house to a funeral. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883
(noun) - The garment donned by Millerites on the day in 1843 when they expected the end of the world. --Mitford Mathews' Dictionary of Americanisms, 1956
(noun) - (1) A corruption of three-thirds, it denoted a draught, once popular, made up of a third each of ale, beer and "two-penny," in contradistinction to "half-and-half." This beverage was superseded in 1722 by the very similar porter, or "entire." --Robert Chambers' Encyclopedia, 1874 (2) Half common ale, and the rest stout or double beer. --B.E.'s Dictionary of the Canting Crew, 1699 (3) Porter was last brewed in the British Isles in Dublin in 1973. The last draughts of the brew were consumed, in true Irish style, at a wake for porter, which was held in a country pub near Belfast in May of that year. The mourners wore black bowlers, downed the porter, and consigned its container in a coffin draped in "Guinness black." --Michael Jackson's The World Guide to Beer, 1977
(noun) - Bearleader or tender. In the old accounts of Congleton between 1589 and 1613, we find payments to the bearward for fetching the bears to the wakes, "for wine, sack, spice, almonds, figs and beer at the great bear-bait." The Bear's Head and White Bear Inn still testify to the former favorite sport of the town. Erasmus, who visited England in the time of Henry VIII, says there were many herds of bears supported in this country for the purpose of baiting. --Edgerton Leigh's Dialect of Cheshire, 1877
(noun) - The name given to an eighteenth-century practice whereby the churchwardens of a parish used their authority to enforce the marriage of a pregnant woman. The term "knobstick" was in allusion to the churchwarden's staff, his symbol of office. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
(verb) - (1) To rise on the stomach with a degree of nausea; applied to articles of diet which prove disagreeable to the taste or difficult of digestion. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) An appetite to eate or drynke mylke, to the extent that it shal not arise or abraid in the stomake. --Sir Thomas Elyot's The Castel of Helth, 1539
(noun) - During the Middle Ages, the custom grew of allowing the choristers of cathedrals to choose yearly one of their number to act the part of a bishop. If the boy-bishop died within the short period of office, he was buried in episcopal robes. A tomb with the effigy of a boy so clothed may be seen in Salisbury Cathedral. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871
(noun) - The cod fish--a slang term which is used interchangeably with Marblehead Turkey in Massachusetts. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
(noun) - The plaster of which the court ladies made their patches. These patches, worn on the face, were cut into the shapes of crescents, stars, circles, diamonds, hearts, crosses, and some even went so far as to patch their faces with a coach-and-four, a ship in full sail, a château, etc. This ridiculous fashion was in vogue in the reign of Charles I, and in the reign of Anne was employed as the badge of political partisanship. The Whig belles wore patches of court plaster on the right side and the Tories on the left side of their faces or foreheads. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1887
(verb) - To find a ready means of evading a law or regulation. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847) the Irish orator and agitator boasted, "I can drive a coach-and-six horses through any Act of Parliament," in allusion to the loose manner in which parliamentary bills were drafted. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
(noun) - (1) A man fetched from the tavern or ale-house by his wife is said to be "arrested by the white serjeant." --Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796 (2) A mythical person or bugaboo to scare children; one who will take them away if they are not good. --Michael Traynor's The English Dialect of Donegal, 1953
(noun) - (1) A small cake; Anglo-Saxon. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855 (2) It was a good old custom for God-fathers and God-mothers, every time their God-children asked their blessing, to give them a cake, which was a God's-kichell. It is still a proverbial saying in some countries, "Ask me a blessing and I will give you a plum-cake." --John Cowell's The Interpreter: The Signification of Words, 1701
(noun) - A deceiver, imposter; apparently from Old French truffant, or Medieval Latin truffans, a fraud. --Mairi Robinson's Concise Scots Dictionary, 1985
(verb) - A sow when she takes the boar is said to be a-brimming; and the boar is said to brim her. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788
(noun) - Wait is an old English word allied to the German wachte, meaning a watchman. It was formerly applied to the court watchmen who blew their horns at certain hours of the night. The name has been extended to any outdoor instrumentalist who performed at night, particularly at Christmas. --J.B. Lippincott's Everyday Phrases Explained, 1913
(adverb) - It has been pouring what we in England vulgarly term "cats and dogs," but which on the politer shores of the Mississippi might be called "raccoons and alligators." --George Sala's America Revisited, 1883
(noun) - As big as Ketherick's pie: Ketherick was the first mayor of Plymouth (1493). The pie for his inaugural banquet is said to have been fourteen feet long. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
(noun) - (1) A composition of cream, eggs, sugar, and whisky. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905 (2) Used by the Highlanders after a drinking match. "Flora made me a bowl of old man's milk, but nothing would bring me round." --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
(noun) - (1) Frequenter of ladies' chambers; a gallant. --C.T. Onions' Shakespeare Glossary, 1911 (2) One who indulges in wantonness. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850 (3) Chamberers, men of intrigue. Othello. --Rev. Alexander Dyce's Glossary to the Works of William Shakespeare, 1902 (4) A woman who attends to a bedchamber; a chambermaid; a concubine. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893 (5) An effeminate man; a carpet-knight. --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopaedia and New Glossary, 1902
(noun) - An inflammation of the bowels, to which children are subject. It is brought on by disorders of the milk, by exposure to cold, and living in low, cold, damp situations. It has been said that those afflicted with this disease have often a swelling in the side. Hence perhaps the name. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
(verb) - Hoyt, or hoit, is to act the romp or hoyden. Winsome and spirited maids go hoyting across the English stage of the seventeenth century. Hoity-toity is an expansion of the same word and originally applied to frolicsome women. The meaning of hoity-toity was altered to become an expression of petulance and surprised disgust, in which function it remains common. The verb to hoit almost disappeared. It is a pity, as it went well with the racing and chasing of "delightfull girles" in an anonymous poem of 1675, The Chase: So ran, so sang, so hoyted the moone's maids/Light as young leverettes greyhounds skip their buskin'd feet,/Spurning th' enamell'd sward grass as they did fleet. --Ivor Brown's Book of Words, 1944
(verb) - "I'll neither mack nor mell," I'll not interfere. Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. --F.T. Dinsdale's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Teesdale in the County of Durham, 1849
(noun) - One who pretends to be possessed of wealth, influence, rank, or indeed any quality which is only conspicuous by its absence. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
(noun) - A fine or blackmail levied on a man who courts a woman residing out of the limits of his own parish. If this be a survival of an ancient practice or custom, it would appear that neither exogamy marriage with nonlocals nor "marriage by capture" were usual at a remote period in this district; but that, on the contrary, the villagers did not, in general, marry outside the limits of their own kindred by blood. --Sidney Addy's Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield, 1888
(interjection) - In what state is your health? Used as a compliment of civility or an inquiry into the state of a person's health; of how, do and ye; whence "howdy". --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775
(adjective/verb) - (1) An expression denoting secrecy as well as silence. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850 (2) To come mumbudgeting, to come clandestinely. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908
(noun) - A figurative garment which is supposed to clothe a troubled female. "She's got her fretting-frock on." --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896
(noun) - (1) An outlaw, meaning a person who might be killed with impugnity, like a wolf. --Thomas Tayler's Law Glossary, 1856 (2) In Old English Law, a cry for the pursuit of an outlaw as one to be hunted down like a wolf; an outlaw. Originally found in the phrase "to cry wolf's head." --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1928
(noun) - (1) A learned or pedantic word or expression; an inkhorn term. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901 (2) This phrase, once common, might be revived to signify pedantic expressions which "smell of the lamp." Shakespeare uses the phrase "inkhorn mate" in 1 Henry IV. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
(noun) - An obsolete English word still used in Kentucky and the South for a small dog or cur, sometimes spelt phyce. The word is perhaps one of the most interesting cases of survival presented by American philology. It is evidently the last small remnant of the old English "foisting cur," quoted as "foisting hound" in Wright's Provincial Dialects 1857. Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors 1859 gives nearly the whole process of gradual corruption: "foisting, foisty, foist, fyst, fyce," and Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words 1855 describes the "foisting-hound" as "a kind of lap-dog," so called from its bad habits, which often have to serve as an excuse for the sins of the owner. A "fisting hound" also is mentioned as a kind of spaniel in Harrison's Description of England 1587. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
(noun) - One who tells fortunes by examining the hand. Chirographic, chirographical, pertaining to chirography; the art of telling fortunes by examining the hand. --John Ridpath's Home Reference Library, 1898
(adjective) - Brackish; applied to smuggled spirits which have been impregnated with salt-water. --William Cope's Glossary of Hampshire Words and Phrases, 1883
(noun) - A party; a set of people, a crowd, implying unity, relationship, or nationality. As -ption occurs as postfix to other words, such as gumption and conniption, it may have been added in this case to the German-Hebrew word karim or the plural krauwim, relations or the related. --Albert Barrère's Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, 1889
(noun) - (1) A light person, and not heavily clothed. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) From the idea of stripping a fly of its covering. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
- On February 22, 1719, a strange socioeconomic ritual was reenacted. According to Alice Morse Earle's Stagecoach and Tavern Days (1900), an odd American custom known as a "shift marriage," which absolved a widow of any previous debts incurred by her dead husband, was carefully observed at a certain crossroad. Justice George Hazard explained that a widow from South Kingston, Rhode Island, was remarried "after she had gone four times across the highway in only her shift with hair low, and no other clothing." Hazard also recorded that a scantily clad Narragansett widow was wed at midnight, "where four roads meet." This risqué practice, which was apparently honored by creditors as well, was carried on sporadically through much of the 18th century in New England and Pennsylvania.
(noun) - Household stuff. The word is used to denote an entire collection, like "bag and baggage." From Welsh gweddill, remnants. Welsh gweddilio is to leave a remnant, and gweddw is a widow, or left person. Gweddill is therefore connected with the root of widow, which seems to exist in most European languages. --G.C. Lewis's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Herefordshire, 1839
(noun) - A glutinous substance extracted from the inner bark of the holly, used for catching birds. The bark is bruised, boiled with water till very soft, and placed in pits to ferment. After two or three weeks, a curious viscid mass is found in the place of the soft bark; this is boiled with a quantity of water and evaporated to a proper consistence. It is spread on twigs or wire netting. Birds are often drawn to the sticky perches by the treacherous singing of a decoy. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871
(noun) - (1) He that can write and reade, and sometime speake Latin. He useth these skills to make counterfaite licences which they call gybes, and sets to seales, in their language falsified documents called jarks. --John Awdelay's Fraternitye of Vagabondes, 1561 (2) Yea, the jarkman is so cunning sometimes that he can speake Latine, which learning of his lifts him up to advancement. By that means he becomes Clarke of their Hall, and his office is to make counterfeit licenses, to which he puts seales, and those are termed jarkes. --Thomas Dekker's The Belman of London, 1608 (3) Jark was rogues' cant for a seal, whence also a license of the Bethlehem Hospital "Bedlam" to beg. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1870
(verb) - (1) To swindle--the coney, or rabbit, being considered a very simple animal. --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopædia and New Glossary, 1902 (2) It has been shown, from Dekker's English Villanies 1632, that the system of swindling was carried to a great length in the 17th century involving a collective society of sharpers, called a warren, and their dupes, rabbit-suckers--that is, young rabbits, or conies. --Robert Nares's Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859
(noun) - (1) A term used facetiously for a party --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940 (2) "I sat in the corner like a homely girl at a kissing-bee, and had nothing to say." --W.F. Drannan's Thirty-one Years on the Plains and in the Mountains, 1900
(adjective) - Black, dirty. From blatch, soot or dirt; to smirch with black. --J. Drummond Robertson's Glossary of Dialect & Archaic Words Used in the County of Gloucester, 1890
(adjective) - Fast asleep is never used. Vale of Gloucestershire. --J. Drummond Robertson's Glossary of Dialect & Archaic Words Used in the County of Gloucester, 1890
(adjective) - (1) Rash to an extreme, in allusion to March being the rutting time of hares, when they are very excitable. Mad as a March hare, as mad as a hare in the rutting season, when they are wild, flighty and strange. --Rev. James Stormonth's Dictionary of the English Language, 1884 (2) Keep him darke, He will run March mad else. --John Fletcher's Mad Lover, 1647
(verb) - To beat up a Congressman. In allusion to a beating administered by Sam Houston to Representative William Stanberry April 13, 1832. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940
(noun) - The equivalent of grass-widow--a married woman whose husband is away for any extended period. The expression dates from the period of California "gold fever," when many men went west, leaving their families behind. --Sylva Clapin's New Dictionary of Americanisms, 1902
(pl. noun) - The small, worthless apples which are left hanging on the trees after the crop has been gathered; Worcestershire. Scriggins, apples left on a tree after the ingathering; Gloucestershire. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
(verb) - To rub, polish. Our parents and grandparents polished their furniture with a homemade mixture of beer, treacle, vinegar, &c. --Edward Gepp's Essex Dialect Dictionary, 1923
Feast Day of St. Cuthbert, who was invoked to ward of nautical misfortune. Thomas Harman's A Caveat or Warening for Commen Cursetors (1567) told readers of "freshwater mariners" known as "whipjackes"--phony beggars whose vessels were, as Harman explained it, wrecked far inland at the "Playne of Salisbery." He cautioned, "These kynde of caterpillers counterfet great losses on the sea. These wyll runne about the country wyth a counterfet lycence, fayning either shypwracke or spoyle by pyrates neare the coaste of Cornwall or Devonshyre, and lande at some haven towne there, having a large and formall wrytinge with the names and seales of suche men of worshyppe, at the least foure or five, as dwelleth neare the place where they fayne their landinge. And neare to those shires wyll they not begge untyll they come into Wylshyre, Hamshyre, Barkeshyre, Oxfordshyre, Middelsex, and so to London, and downe by the ryver to seeke for their shyppe and goods that they never hade; then passe they into Kent, demaunding almes to bring them home."
(noun) - A pickpocket; also applied to fingers, no doubt for a similar reason. To dive is to pick pockets. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
(noun) - A witch-finder who discovered witches by pricking them with a wooden bodkin or pin looking for the "witch-mark." Witch-score, the mark made with a sharp instrument on the forehead of a supposed witch to render her harmless. --Alexander Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary, 1911
(noun) - Doggerel verse; from the lines formerly engraved on knife blades. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (1596). --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
(noun) - In Lancashire we find the term gyst-ale, which seems to be one of the corruptions of disguising, as applied to mumming. Gyst-ale, or guising, was celebrated in Eccles England with much rustic splendor at the termination of the marling field-dunging season when the villagers, with a "king" at their head, walked in procession with garlands, to which silver plate was attached, which was contributed by the principal gentry in the neighbourhood. --R.T. Hampson's Dates, Charters, and Customs of the Middle Ages, 1841
(adjective) - A strange synonym for "the real thing," the very essence of an argument. Also applied to any subject thought worthy of superlative praise. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
noun) - The removal of rats in a body from any place they have formerly occupied. Western Scotland. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
In Irish and Scottish folklore, the Sluagh (Irish pronunciation: sɫuə, Scottish Gaelic: slˠ̪uaɣ, modern Irish spelling Slua, English: "horde, crowd") were the spirits of the restless dead.
The Catherine Wheel, also known as the Breaking Wheel, was one of the most widely used torture devices during the medieval times in Europe. It was used to execute criminals and other accused people since the times of antiquity, although its use became more widespread during the medieval times.
(noun) - A custom was formerly in vogue of rising early on Easter-day to see the sun "dance," the superstitious believing the sun really did dance on that day. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
(noun) - (1) A young sodomite. --John Farmer's Vocabula Amatoria: A French-English Glossary of Words, Phrases, and Allusions Occurring in the Works of Rabelais, Voltaire, Molière, and Others, 1896 (2) From Latin corbita, a large ship for traffic, French corvette. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878
(pronoun) - A courtier will say, "Let him do it himself," but the Cockney has it, "Let him do it his-self." Here the latter comes nearest to the truth, though both he and courtier are wrong, for the grammatical construction should be, "Let he do it his-self," or by a transposition of words, better and more energetically arranged, "Let he his-self do it." It must be allowed that the Londoner does not use this compounded pronoun in the mode before us from any sense of conviction. He has fortunately stumbled upon a part of the truth which the courtier has overleaped, as the nominative in the singular number is my-self, and not me-self. --Samuel Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, c. 1803
(noun) - A moocher. Many city people visit their backwoods cousins only when strawberries are ripe to get enough free berries for a year's supply of jam. Ozarks. --Vance Randolph's and George Wilson's Down in the Holler, 1953
(verb) - (1) To calculate, reckon. --Walter Skeat's Student's Pastime, 1896 (2) Shortened from calcule. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893 (3) He began to calke how the sonne was in Gemini. --Stephen Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure, 1509
(adjective) - Dismal, gloomy, distressful; from Anglo-Saxon dreorig, sorrowful, Icelandic dreyrigr, gory. --Rev. James Stormonth's Dictionary of the English Language, 1884
(verb) - To inherit the whole property; to get possession of the whole of anything; Eastern England. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
(verb/noun) - (1) To sprinkle or splash water upon. --C. Clough Robinson's Dialect of Leeds, 1862 (2) A splash of rain or mud. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
(noun) - Refuse, trash, as the smallest kind of potatoes, not fully grown, are called "mere drabloch." The same is applied to bad butcher-meat. Teutonic drabbe is rendered dregs, Belgium drabbig, muddy. Thus the term might be borrowed from liquors. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
(verb) - Noting a family resemblance; usually applied in the case of children to parents or other ancestors. We speak of seeing the "Folger look." --William Macy's Nantucket Scrap Basket, c. 1916
(noun) - (1) A diversion common enough at country wakes and fairs. The performance requires a large circle enclosed with ropes, which is occupied by as many persons as are permitted to play. All of these except one, who is the jingler, have their eyes blinded with handkerchiefs. The eyes of the jingler are not covered, but he holds a small bell in each hand, which he is obliged to keep ringing incessantly, so long as the play continues, which is commonly about twenty minutes, but sometimes is extended to half an hour. --Joseph Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801 (2) His object was to elude the pursuit of his companions, and he won the prize if he was still free when the play ceased. It was an amusing sight to see the men trying to catch the jingler, running into each other's arms and catching every one but the right one. --Peter Ditchfield's Old English Sports, 1891
(verb) - Quarreling, or contending with a loud voice. Raising a wrow is exciting a quarrel and confusion in the streets. From wrawe, angry. --Robert Willan's List of Ancient Words of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1814
(adjective) - (1) Married. --B.E.'s New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, 1699 (2) Noozed, married, hanged. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
(noun) - A train of several cars which left St. John's on the eve of the 24th of May with trouters for the various ponds of their choice, dropping them off wherever they wished along the railway line and picking them up the following night to bring them back with their catches, hangovers, fly-bites, chills, etc. Newfoundland. --D.W. Prowse's Newfoundland Guide Book, 1911
(noun) - A boundary mark in an unenclosed field. It is often a low post, thence called a dool-post; from Anglo-Saxon dælan. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
(verb/adjective) - (1) To knock with a dull sound, as with the fist in the back or ribs. Stupid, dizzy, or giddy, from an affection of the brain; said especially of sheep. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1897 (2) To stupefy. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830 (3) Stupefied. Dunt sheep, one that mopes about from a disorder in his head; Norfolk. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
(noun) - (1) One who habitually saunters about. From dander, to stroll, wander; to trifle, misspend one's time. To talk in a rambling, incoherent way. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905 (2) On the dander, on a drinking spree. --Michael Traynor's English Dialect of Donegal, 1953
(noun/verb) - The act of wasting time in bad company; immodest conduct; explained as denoting immodest behavior in Ayrshire. The latter part of the word is obviously from the verb to taigle, to detain, to hinder. Shall we suppose that the term is formed from the idea of a servant being hindered, or pretending to be so, in seeking for eggs? --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
(noun) - A young turkey, fit for the table but not fully grown--a turkey-poult. In Scottish, pout is a young partridge or moor-fowl. From French poulet, a pullet. --Edward Moor's Suffolk Words and Phrases, 1823
(pl. noun) - Loaded dice are called high and low men, or high and low fulhams, by Ben Jonson and other writers of his time, either because they were made at Fulham in London's West End or from that place being the resort of sharpers. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
(interjection) - An interjection. This is a word, like others of the same class, the precise meaning of which is not easy to define. --James Jennings' Dialect of Somersetshire, 1869
(verb) - To treat and exhibit as an object of interest. Originally to take visitors to see the lions formerly kept at the Tower of London. Hence lion-hunter, one given to lionizing people, popularized by Dickens in Mr. and Mrs. Leo Hunter in Pickwick Papers. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
(noun) - The art of secret writing, characters, or cyphers known only to persons that correspond with one another. Steganographist, an artist in private writing. --Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
(verb) - I'll do it, and chance the ducks, meaning "I'll do it and take my chances," is in reference to a boat's crew arrayed in clean white jumpers or "ducks" ready for inspection when it is discovered that some duty involving the possible soiling of their garments has been neglected. They accordingly say, "We must do it, and chance the ducks"--that is, run the risk of our ducks being splashed. --A. Wallace's Popular Sayings Dissected, 1895
(noun) - (1) A salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 (2) The direction, "Bind the wound and grease the nail," is still common when a wound has been given with a rusty nail. Sir Kenelm Digby says the salve is sympathetic, and quotes several instances to prove that "as the sword is treated, the wound inflicted by it feels similar. Thus, if the instrument is kept wet the wound will feel cool; if held to the fire it will feel hot." --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1887
(noun) - A salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it.
--Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
(pl. noun) - When two brothers marry two sisters, the children are known as double cousins. Such relationships are very common in the Ozarks, and are considered somehow significant. In referring to each other these people seldom say simply, "He's my cousin," but rather, "We're double cousins." The word cousin may indicate very distant relationship, but own cousin always means first cousin. --Vance Randolph's and George Wilson's Down in the Holler, 1953
(verb/noun) - A capital punishment inflicted on a malefactor on the seashore by laying him bound on the sands till the next full tide carried him away. From Norman falese, sands, rocks, cliffs. --John Bouvier's Law Dictionary, 1839
(verb/noun) - (1) To bewitch by a certain evil influence of the eye. --Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1749 (2) Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft 1584 telleth us that our English people in Ireland were much given to this idolatry in Queen Elizabeth's time insomuch that, there being a disease amongst their cattle that grew blind, they did commonly execute people for it, calling them eye-biting witches. --Thomas Ady's Candle in the Dark; or, A Treatise Concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft, 1656
(verb) - To bewitch an animal with the evil eye. Northern England. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
(adverb) - To come home by the villages, to be drunk; a provincial expression. If, on the other hand, one comes home by the fields, one has no opportunity for drinking. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
(adjective) - Superstitiously afraid. This is the word of which eerie is a later form. The Anglo-Saxon form is earh. Aberdeenshire. --Walter Skeat's Student's Pastime, 1896
(noun) - A policy practised by a nation or party in politics of dabbling in minor acts in a hostile manner while they are unable to deal with the larger issues. It was first applied in 1898 to the policy of France in reference to the conflicting colonial interests of that country and Great Britain. The Times quoted this as "a policy of pin-pricks," which forthwith became a political phrase. --J.B. Lippincott's Everyday Phrases Explained, 1913
(noun) - A rude, violent person, who pulls others about; whence the common name for a dog who is a good ratter. --Charles Mackay's Lost Beauties of the English Language, 1874
(noun) - A calfskin stuffed with straw in the rude similitude of a calf, similar enough to deceive the imperfect perception organs of a cow. At milking time the tulchan, with head duly bent, was set as if to suck. The fond cow, looking round, fancied that her calf was busy and that all was right, and so gave her milk freely, which the cunning maid was straining in white abundance into the pail all the while. King James's Scotch bishops were, by the Scotch people, derisively called "tulchan bishops." --Thomas Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, 1845
(adjective) - (1) Almost choked or stifled. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871 (2) Quackle, to interrupt breathing; to suffocate; to choke. East Anglia. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
(noun) - Properly, a locked-up chamber in which articles of dress, stores, etc. are kept; by extension, a privy. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901
(noun) - A young or small child; a brat. Often used depreciatively, and formerly as a synonym of bastard. Possibly a corruption of German bänkling, bastard, from bank, bench, i.e. a child begotten on a bench, and not in the marriage bed; 1500s-1800s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
(verb) - (1) To sleep. In the old pugilistic days, a man knocked down, or "out of time," was said to be "sent to dorse." But whether because he was senseless, or because he lay on his back, is not known, though most likely the latter. Formerly spelt dorse; from Gaelic dosal, slumber. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887 (2) To dorse with a woman signifies to sleep with her. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
(noun) - A means of livelihood; a working for one's bread. From "gain-bread." --C.A.M. Fennell's Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964
(verb) - A whimsical corruption of the word concur, substituting dog for cur as equivalent. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859
(adjective) - Furious or mad. We yet retain in some parts of England the word wodnes for furiousness or madness. --Richard Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1605
(noun) - (1) Plague, pestilence; from Old English manncwealm; c. 900-1300s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908 (2) Slaughter of men; from Robert of Gloucester. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863
(noun) - (1) Sometimes a real horse, sometimes the figure of one cut out and carried by the sportsman. It being found that wild fowl, which would take alarm at the appearance of a man, would remain quiet when they saw only a horse approaching, advantage was taken of it, for the shooter to conceal himself behind a real or artificial horse to get within shot of his game. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859 (2) To supply the want of a stalking-horse you may make one of pieces of old canvas, which you must form into the shape of an old horse, with the head bending downwards, as if he grazed. --Gervase Markham's English Husbandman, 1615
(adjective) - Anciently, when a person was placed in a coffin, he was said to be "chested." Chaucer has, "He is now dead and nailed in his chest." In the heading of the 50th chapter of Genesis, the word is used in reference to Joseph, of whom it is said, "He dieth and is chested." --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882
(noun) - (1) The toes of a man who turns his feet inward. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887 (2) The toes of a man who walks duck-footed. --John Farmer's and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1890-1904
(interjection) - A word of command to horses in a team meaning "go to the left." This was horse-language in the 14th century of Chaucer. Heit scot and Heit broc are names still given to cart-horses. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
(verb) - When a person gets the worst of a bargain, he is said to have "bought the rabbit." From an old story about a man selling a cat to a foreigner for a rabbit. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
(verb/noun) - To parboil. A slight boiling. If meat seems likely to be tainted before it can be dressed, the cook must "give it a plow" to check the progress of decay and, if possible, keep it a little while at stand. In John Ray's South and East Country Words 1674 the same word is written play. He speaks of a "playing heat," and says that in Norfolk it is pronounced plaw. It may be from some French term of cookery, in books not easily accessible, or it may have descended to us from Anglo-Saxon pleoh danger. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
(noun) - (1) In the North of England and in Scotland, a midwife is called a howdy, or howdy-wife. I take howdy to be a diminutive of how, and to be derived from this almost obsolete opinion of old women. I once heard an etymology of howdy to the following effect: "How d'ye"--midwives being great gossipers. --John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1813 (2) Brand sneers at the derivation from "'how d'ye'--midwives being great gossipers," but I think that which he supplies is far more ridiculous. I have not been fortunate enough to discover any original to my satisfaction, but I may perhaps be permitted to observe, in defence of what has been so much ridiculed, that "how d'ye" is a natural enough salutation to a sick woman from the midwife, who, by the way, is called in German die Wehmutter, or "oh dear mother." --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
(noun/verb) - In Law, the receiving of a person into friendly custody who otherwise must have gone to prison. It differs from bail because a person is, in this case, to be at large from the day of his being mainprised. --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775
(noun) - This expression (from French, lit de justice) literally denoted the seat or throne upon which the King of France was accustomed to sit when personally present in Parliament, and from this original meaning the expression came, in course of time, to signify the Parliament itself. Under the ancient monarchy of France, a bed of justice denoted a solemn session of the king in Parliament. According to the principle of the old French constitution the authority of the Parliament, being derived entirely from the crown, ceased when the king was present. Consequently, all ordinances enrolled at a bed of justice were acts of the royal will, and of more authority than decisions of Parliament. --William Walsh's Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1900
(noun) - A round, hollow metallic ball having a neck with a slender pipe opening to the ball which, being partly filled with water and laid on the fire, the steam or vapourous air is forced out with great noise and violence. It is used to blow the fire, and in Italy as a cure for smoky chimneys. --John Coxe's Medical Dictionary, 1817
(noun) - Sympathetic powder (Pulvis sympatheticus) of Sir Kenelm Digby, was composed of calcined sulphate of iron, prepared in a particular manner. It was long supposed to be able to cure a wound if applied to the weapon that inflicted it, or even to a portion of the bloody clothes. --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844
(verb) - To put ginger up a horse's fundament, and formerly a live eel, to make him lively and carry his tail well. A forfeit is incurred by any horse-dealer's servant who shall shew a horse without first feaguing him. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
(pl. noun) - The sun's rays, as they sometimes appear in showery weather, popularly believed to suck up the water from the earth into the sun, there to be converted into rain, and held to be a sign of coming showers. --Georgina Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book, 1879
(adjective) - Applied to a couple whose banns of marriage have been proclaimed three times in church. Also axed-out. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900
(adjective) - (1) Affected with weakness of nerves. The word seems to be a corruption of nervous, and therefore cut out of its proper place, but in point of fact, the word nervous is a mere modern abuse. Mr. Pegge recommends nervish to be substituted for nervous, to signify weakness of the nerves. And by all means, let it be put down to our credit that we have anticipated his recommendation by many years. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830 (2) To preserve a distinction when we speak of such a man, and of the disorder by which his strength is impaired, we should rather say a nervish man, and a nervish disorder, which termination conforms with similar words, such as waspish, devilish, feverish--all expressive of bad qualities or disordered habits. --Samuel Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, 1844
(verb) - To splice two pieces of wood together. From Jutland Danish at skarre ved, to join two pieces together. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892
(adjective) - (1) Shaped like a breast or teat. --W. Tarton's Medical Glossary in Which the Various Branches of Medicine are Deduced from Their Original Languages, 1802 (2) Related to mammifer, an animal which has breasts or paps to suckle its young; from Latin mamma, a breast, and fero, to bear. --Robert Hunter's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1894
(noun) - A small cushion or pillow. In surgery, a small olive-shaped mass of lint used for plugging deep wounds; diminutive of pulvinus, cushion. --Sydenham Society's Lexicon of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1897
(verb) - To climb up the bole trunk of a tree by the muscular action of the arms, thighs, and legs. --Robert Willan's List of Ancient Words of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1814
(verb) - To tie a handkerchief around a man's arm to designate that he is to play the part of a female at a dance where there are not enough ladies to go around. He is then said to dance "lady fashion," and his reward is being allowed to set with the ladies between dances. This privilege, however, quite often makes him feel as out of place as a cow on a front porch. --Ramon Adams' Western Words: A Dictionary of the Range, Cow Camp, and Trail, 1946
(noun) - A beverage compounded of buffalo gall and water in the proportion of a gill to a pint, the medicinal virtue of which was thought to have been in an exact ratio to its filthy taste. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
(noun) - The drinking glasses of the Middle Ages, made at Venice, were said to break into shivers if poison were put into them. Venice glass, from its excellency, became a synonym for perfection. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
(noun) - A term of ridicule for a citizen. In Henry VIII's time, flat round caps were the height of fashion but, as usual, when their date was worn out, they became ridiculous. Citizens of London continued to wear them long after they were generally disused, and were often satirized for it. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859
(interjection/adjective) - An expression of intimacy. To be hail-fellow with anyone, to be on such a footing as to greet him with "hail-fellow" at meeting. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859
(verb) - To laugh, or rather to have a countenance expressive of laughter, without laughing out. From Icelandic flyra. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
(noun/verb) - (1) A person who entraps or decoys others into actions or positions which may be to his advantage and to their ruin or loss. Also applied to an animal. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1926 (2) A snare; from Trapani, a part of Italy where our ships, being insidiously invited on the reign of Queen Elizabeth, were unjustly detained. --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775
(noun) - A company of people, especially a disorderly or vulgar crowd; a mob, rabble; Scotland, Ireland, and Northumberland. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
(noun) - The shirt of a railroad boomer laborer was often given this title because as an itinerant worker he traveled light and supposedly wore the same shirt for thousands of miles. --Marjorie Tallman's Dictionary of American Folklore, 1959
(noun) - A white hat with a black mourning hatband, probably because a butcher would rather not wear a black hat. White hats and black bands have, however, become genteel ever since the late Prince Consort Albert patronized them. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
(noun) - That species of intimidation practised by masters on their servants, when the latter are compelled to vote as their masters please. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
(interjection) - (1) A word used in expressions of surprise, chiefly by older people. "What the farrups are ye at?" --Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883 (2) Ferrups, an exclamation of mild imprecation, especially in the phrase, "by the ferrups!" Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derwentwater. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
(adjective/adverb) - Cheerful; in good spirits; friendly; hospitable. As an adverb, cheerfully. Renfrewshire, Kirkcudbright. --Mairi Robinson's Concise Scots Dictionary, 1985
(adjective/adverb) - Out of harness and the working habit. A horse has the collar slipped over its neck when put to work. --Trench Johnson's Phrases and Names: Their Origins and Meanings, 1906
(noun) - (1) In Papal times in Britain, it was considered an act of ill-luck for a newly-married couple to retire for the night until the bridal bed had been blessed. --Edwin and Mona Radford's Encyclopædia of Superstitions, 1949 (2) The pride of the clergy and the bigotry of the laity was such that newly-married people were made to wait till midnight after the marriage day before they would pronounce a benediction, unless they were handsomely paid for it, and the couple durst not undress without it, on pain of excommunication. --Francis Blomefield's Topographical History of Norfolk, c. 1752
(verb/noun) - The act of exhaling a mouthful of smoke and then inhaling it through the nose. Considered ultrasophisticated by teenagers. --Harold Wentworth's Dictionary of American Slang, 1960
(pl. noun) - (1) Small fragments of very thin things, as of dry leaves or dust of tobacco; from Norwegian flus, Swedish flisa, a scale, fragment. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878 (2) Very small flakes in bottled liquors. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
(noun) - A dull-witted pedant; a foolish pretender to learning; from Nicholas Dorbellus (c. 1400-1475), a professor of scholastic philosophy at Poitiers, and a follower of Duns Scotus, whose name gave us dunce. --Joseph Shipley's Dictionary of Early English, 1955
(verb) - To pilfer stealthfully. It seems to combine the meanings of English slang crib and Cheshire creem, to hide. --Thomas Darlington's The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, 1887
(noun) - The weight formerly used in the navy, by which the purser--an officer appointed by the lords of the admirality to take charge of the provisions and slops of a ship of war, and to see that they were carefully distributed--retained an eighth for "waste," and the men received only seven-eighths of what was supplied by the government. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book, 1867
(noun) - Drunkard's nose, a nose with "grog blossoms" or a "copper nose," such as is possessed by an "admiral of the red." --Albert Barrère's Argot and Slang Dictionary, 1911
(noun) - For cutting of meat, persons of rank kept a carver, who was designated the scissor, or carptor. --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882
(noun) - A small child or diminutive person. Fairies were formerly called urchins. --Thomas Sternberg's Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire, 1851
(noun) - This word, as far as I know, only occurs in the two following phrases. "As hard as a brazzil," is an expression of frequent occurrence to denote any kind of unusual hardness. If, for example, the bread is overbaked it is said to be baked "as hard as a brazzil," or if the housewife cannot break her Bath brick a cake of abrasive clay used for household polishing easily, she exclaims, "It's as hard as a brazzil." The other expression is "as fond as a brazzil." Here the word brazzil probably means a low, impudent girl, in which sense it is sometimes used still. -- Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892
(verb/noun) - To vex; to be in a feaze is to be in a state of excitement; still commonly colloquial in the States, especially in Virginia and the South. It was used formerly in the same sense as tease, as in teasing wool, but more particularly applied to curry-combing. "I'll pheeze you," says Christophoro Sly in The Taming of the Shrew meaning that he will vex the worthy hostess by staying--like teasel burrs in wool. Another authority regards it as derived from the Anglo-Saxon fysan, used to denote the rapid and noisy movement of water, and from which we get the modern fizz. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
(noun) - Dry, withering weather. The wind, when such prevails, blows out of the east and northeast, just as it blew on the prophet Jonah when it withered his gourd. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
(adjective) - (1) Surfeited. --J.F. Palmer's Devonshire Dialect Glossary, 1837 (2) Given to gluttony, overeating, &c. --James Barclay's Complete and Universal Dictionary of the English Language, 1848 The word is related to Latin crapula, which meant excessive eating and imbibing, along with the unpleasant aftereffects. Crapula was itself adapted from a Greek forerunner.
(verb) - An admonition to one inclined to exaggerate or use explosive language. The allusion is to beer. "A pint of beer, Miss, and draw it mild." --Edwin Radford's Encyclopædia of Phrases and Origins, 1945
(pl. noun) - A term for specie, or money. It would appear to have some connection with Dutch spaunde, "chips," slang for money; and there is a word oolik, bad, wretched. The term probably originated in New York in perversion of these words. This term has become common among English turfites. --Albert Barrère's Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, 1889
(noun) - (1) One who keeps a knick-knackatory; a dealer in knick-knacks. Knick-knackery, knick-knacks collectively. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908 (2) Nicknackitorian, a dealer in all manner of curiosities, such as Egyptian mummies, Indian implements, antique shields, helmets, &c. --London's Annual Register, 1802
(noun) - (1) A light flaw which suddenly careens a vessel and passes off. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book, 1867 (2) This phrase for a little wind, hardly sufficient for moving a sailing ship, arises from the following legend: Eric, King of Sweden, was so familiar with evil spirits that whichever way he turned his cap the wind would blow. Hence, his cap was said to be full of wind. --Edwin Radford's Encyclopædia of Phrases and Origins, 1945
(verb) - To lock. Unchubb, to unlock. From the well known make of lock by Charles Chubb (1772-1846), English locksmith. --Paul Tempest's Lag's Lexicon: A Dictionary of the English Prison, 1950 (where is the definition that it's an erection from? Twitter? Really?)
(noun) - Opposition to the assertion that the persons from time to time reported to have died aged a century or more had really attained to that age. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1895
(adjective) - To be for all waters, to be able to turn to any occupation, like a fish that can live in either fresh or salt water. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
(adjective) - Strange, as an unkard place. A servant is unkard on his first going to a fresh servitude. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788
(verb) - I cannot do-withall, I cannot help it. This phrase is not uncommon in early writers. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
(noun) - The action or pastime of riding on bob-sleighs. Bobbing is carried out either on bobs (five passengers) or boblets (three passengers). --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
(adjective) - Pertaining to the urine of horses; hippuric acid, an acid obtained from the urine of horses; from Greek hippos horse, and ouron, urine. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
(noun) - An instrument for measuring the distance which a wheel rolls over a road; an odometer or perambulator. --William Whitney's Century Dictionary, 1889
(adjective) - To turn cat in pan is a proverbial expression signifying a changing of sides in religion or politics. It has been suggested that it should be cate, the old word for cake, which being baked and consequently turned in the pan aptly elucidates the meaning of the proverb. --William Toone's Etymological Dictionary of Obsolete Words, 1832
(verb) - To hold a merry meeting, with noise and riot, but without doing injury to anyone. It seems generally to include the idea of a wasteful use of food and of intemperate use of strong drink. Could we suppose that the proper pronunciation were guleravage it might be derived from French gueule, the mouth, the throat, also the stomach, conjoined with the verb already mentioned; to waste, to gormandize. --John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1808
(adjective) - Held up by a woman; an excuse for being late on the job. Pacific Northwest. --Walter McCulloch's Woods Words: A Comprehensive Dictionary of Loggers' Terms, 1958
(noun) - (1) Food, familiarly. --C. Clough Robinson's Glossary of Words Pertaining to the Dialect of Mid-Yorkshire, 1876 (2) Materials to support the belly. --John Ash's Dictionary of the English Language, 1775
(noun) - The science of calculating nativities, or predicting the future events of life from the stars predominant at birth. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
(noun) - A skirmish or fighting between two or more. It is oft-times confounded with assalt. But they differ in that an assalt is only a wrong to the party, but an affray may also be without word or blow given, as if a man shew himself furnished with armour or weapons not usually worn, it may strike fear into others unarmed. Of the French affres, a fright. --Thomas Blount's Law Dictionary and Glossary, 1717
(noun/verb) - (1) A soft, pulpy substance. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855 (2) To squeeze, press; to beat, crush, or trample into a soft mass. Hence jammocked, worn out, exhausted. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905
(pl. noun) - (1) Spectacles. --R. Pearse Chope's The Dialect of Hartland, Devonshire, 1891 (2) Sparticles, spectacles. --Patrick Devine's Folklore of Newfoundland in Old Words, Phrases, and Expressions, 1937
(noun) - In Newcastle, treacle made hard by boiling. Called in other places in the North clag-candy, lady's taste, slittery, tom trot, and treacle ball. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
(verb) - To cheat; to defraud. Similar in origin to such words as burke, boycott, and bogus. It is now classed as slang in England but for a long period was much used by standard English writers. In America however, the word is still looked upon as orthodox and is applied to all kinds of fraudulent dealing and deceit. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
(noun) - This odd mode of expressing pleasure, which seems to be taken from the practice of animals who, in a playful mood, bite each other's ears, is very common in our old dramatists. "I will bite thee by the ear." Romeo and Juliet. --Rev. Alexander Dyce's Glossary to the Works of Shakespeare, 1902
(noun) - (1) A state of extreme carefulness approaching to miserliness. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892 (2) A state of want or deficiency; poverty. Cumberland. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905
(noun) - (1) A human stallion; a fellow who debauches many country girls. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) From kintra, country, and cooser, a stallion. --John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1879 revision
(pl. noun) - Trousers buttoned breeches-fashion, having the flap, not the fly, front. Warwickshire. --G.F. Northall's Folk-Phrases of Four Counties: Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, 1894
(noun) - Beds collectively, especially in a hospital. How long will it be before the little job of putting on a shirt button is called sewage? --Eric Partridge's Chamber of Horrors: A Glossary of Official Jargon, Both English and American, 1952
(adjective) - (1) Within Lancashire, to gawm is to understand or comprehend, and a man is said to gawm that which he can hold in his hand. For this reason, a person is said there to be gawmless when his fingers are so cold and frozen that he has not proper use of them. --Rev. John Watson's Uncommon Words Used in Halifax, 1775 (2) Heedless; careless; inattentive. Senseless; vacant; lubberly. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905
(adjective/adverb) - Out of all restraint. Derived from the exclamation "ho!"--used to stop the combat at a tournament. --William Toone's Etymological Dictionary of Obsolete Words, 1832
(noun) - (1) An inclination or fondness for a person of the opposite sex. --R. Pearse Chope's Dialect of Hartland Devonshire, 1891 (2) Simmithy, to look after admiringly; to pay attention to. Also written simathy. Northwest Devonshire. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
(noun) - Throwing with quads metal pieces of type. One takes up the quads, shakes them, and throws them after the manner of throwing dice. When the number of quads with the nicks appearing uppermost are counted, the highest thrower being the winner. --John Southward's Dictionary of Typography, 1875
(adjective) - (1) Of or pertaining to laughter; from Greek gelastikos, inclined to laugh. From Greek gelos, laughter, and skopeo, to see. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1895 (2) Geloscopy, divination performed by means of laughter; divining any person's qualities or character by observation of the manner of his laughter. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1736
(noun) - The ordinary vegetable or fruit market, in contradistinction to a meat or fish market. --R. Pearse Chope's Dialect of Hartland, Devonshire, 1891
(noun) - The barbarous practice of throwing at cocks, formerly a custom at Shrovetide. This unmanly pastime is, I fear, not entirely abolished in some parts of England. Query--if the word sqwoilin is from cwellan, to kill? Sqwoilin is also used for throwing. --John Akerman's Glossary of Provincial Words and Phrases in Wiltshire, 1842
(noun) - A species of insanity in which the patient evinces a rage for reciting poetry. From Greek metreon, metre, and mainomai, to be insane. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
(adjective) - A suggested explanation of a person's stupidity. It was formerly believed that the scent of the flowering bean induced stupidity in the recipient of it. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
(noun) - A peculiarly shaped kiln belonging to the Customs, and situated near the London docks, in which are collected contraband goods, as tobacco, cigars, tea, &c. which have been smuggled, till a sufficient quantity has been accumulated, when the whole is set fire to and consumed. --Robert Hunter's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1894
(verb) - (1) To stretch or expand; to lay out a corpse; from Saxon streccan. Streeking-board, a board on which the limbs of the deceased are stretched out and composed. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) Streeker, a layer-out of the dead. --Francis Robinson's Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Whidby Yorkshire, 1876
“The laqui is a strip of leather, five or six feet long, to each end of which is fastened a stone about two pounds weight. The huntsman, who is on horseback, holds one of these in his hands, and whirling the other, slings the string at the animal in so dexterous a manner that the stones form a tight knot around his legs" - Books on Google Play
Spanish America: Or A Descriptive, Historical, and Geographical Account of the Dominions of Spain in the Western Hemisphere, Continental and Insular; Illustrated by a Map of Spanish North America, and the West-India Islands; a Map of Spanish South America, and an Engraving, Representing the Comparative Altitudes of the Mountains in Those Regions, Volume 2
(noun) - In the Ptolemaic system, the moon was fixed in the innermost of nine spheres which revolved around the earth. The inflected genitive moon's sphere occurs several times in early plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream. --C.H. Herford's Notes on the Works of Shakespeare, 1902
On Mid-Lent Sunday the Welsh customarily drank braggot, a meadlike beverage made of "spiced and honeyed ale." According to John Ray's North Country Words (1691), braggot is derived from the Welsh "brag, signifying malt, and gots, a honeycomb."
(noun) - (1) Ale given to the older workmen by an apprentice or new hand as an entrance fee on taking his place amongst them. --Georgina Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book, 1879 (2) An old custom amongst miners, when a man enters first into work, to pay his first day's wages for ale. --William Hooson's Miner's Dictionary, 1747 (3) A stranger will generally be asked to "stand his foot-ale." --A. Benoni Evans' Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs, 1881 (4) Drink given by the seller to the buyer at a cattle fair. --D. Nicholson's Manuscript Collection of Caithness Scotland Words (5) A fine paid by a young man when found courting out of his own district. --William Dickinson's Glossary of the Cumberland Dialect, 1899
Comments by gammerstang
Show previous 200 comments...
Gammerstang commented on the word fixfax
(noun) - The tendon of the neck of cattle or sheep. Figuratively, and perhaps ludicrously, transferred to the punishment of the juggs, or pillory. --John Jamieson's Scottish Etymological Dictionary, 1808
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word pudding-time
(noun) - Formerly all English dinners commenced with pudding, as they still do in remote districts. Hence, pudding-time meant dinner time. A foreigner who in the seventeenth century visited England and published his experiences in 1698 speaks enthusiastically of English puddings: "Oh what an excellent thing is an English pudding! To come at pudding-time is a proverbial phrase meaning to come at the happiest moment in the world. Make a pudding for an Englishman and you will regale him." --Henry Reddall's Fact, Fancy, and Fable, 1889
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word smugsmith
(noun) - A smuggler. Sussex. --Edward Nairne's Kentish Tales with Historical Notes, 1790
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word ambiloquy
(noun) - (1) The use of ambiguous expressions. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1895 (2) The use of indeterminate expressions; discourse of doubtful meaning. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 (3) Double-speaking. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cramp-ring
(noun) - (1) A ring made of the hinge of a coffin is supposed to have the virtue of preventing the cramp. --Francis Grose's Provincial Glossary, 1787 (2) Formerly, rings made from the hinges of coffins were worn as charms for the cure of fits, or for the prevention of cramp or even rheumatism. The superstition continues, though the metal is of necessity changed, few coffins having now hinges of silver. --John Harland and T.T. Wilkinson's Lancashire Folklore, 1867 (3) When a grave was reopened, people stripped a piece of metal from an old coffin. It was cut in circular shape, a hole was bored in it, and the amulet was worn suspended from a ribbon round the neck. --Marie Trevelyan's Folklore of Wales, 1909
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word connywest
(adjective) - Sheep's-eyed; sidelong; shy; used also when a person squints a little. Perhaps the word is cannywest, for canny hinny, in some parts, means a sly person. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word errhine
(noun) - A medicine which when applied to the mucous membrane of the nose increases the natural secretions and produces sneezing. Having the action of an errhine. --Sydenham Society's Lexicon of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1897
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word knocking up
(verb) - The knocker-up carries a long pole with which he taps at the bedroom windows of his clients. --Thomas Darlington's Folk-Speech of Cheshire, 1887
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hammer of it
(noun) - The phrase, "the hammer of it," means the long and short of it. "That's about the hammer of it," concludes an argument or explanation. --Edward Gepp's Essex Dialect Dictionary, 1923
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word holiday-folks
(pl. noun) - People without the ties of business. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word queer-cuffin
(noun) - Justice of the Peace. --A.V. Judges' The Elizabethan Underworld Glossary, 1930
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word vug
(noun) - (1) A cavity in a rock; a cave, a hollow; adaptation of Cornish mining term vooga; hence, vuggy, full of cavities. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1928 (2) Vughy rock, a stratum of cellular structure, or one containing many cavities. --William Gresley's Glossary of Terms Used in Coal Mining, 1883
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Declaration-men
(pl. noun) - Those who signed the Declaration of Independence. --Richard Thornton's American Glossary, 1912
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word maiden-kimmer
(noun) - The maid who attends the kimmer, or matron who has the charge of the infant at kimmerings, or baptisms; who lifts the babe into the arms of its father to receive the sprinkling of salvation. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word pregnance
pregnance, fertility, inventive power. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hypothecator
(noun) - One who pledges a ship, or other property, as security for the repayment of money borrowed. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word blue pig
(noun) - A blue pig is a place where whiskey is surreptitiously sold. --Gilbert Tucker's American English, 1921
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word spulp
(verb) - (1) To be a busybody or eavesdropper. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905 (2) To collect and retail scandal. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word volo-nolo
(noun) - A vacillation or wavering in decision; formed on Latin volo, I am willing, and nolo, I am unwilling. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1929
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word beggar's bed
(noun) - The bed kept in farmers' barns for beggars. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word quizzing-glass
(noun) - An eyeglass. This was applied to the old single eyeglass, which was not stuck in the eye, as now, but was held in the hand. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
April 23, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fipple
s:
Fipple (noun) - (1) The underlip. "See how he hangs his fipple." --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) The underlip in men and animals, when it hangs down large and loose. "To hang one's fipple," to look disappointed, discontented, or sulky; also, to weep. --John Jamieson's Scottish Etymological Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word podware
(noun) - A name given to beans, peas, tares, vetches, and such vegetables as have pods; Kent. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word blumf
(noun) - A fellow who grumpfs at all genuine sports and sits as sour as the devil when all around him are joyous. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fire-spy
(noun) - One who is on the lookout for a fire. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word randyrow
(noun) - A disturbance; corrupted from rendezvous. --G.C. Lewis' Glossary of Provincial Herefordshire, 1839
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gloveresses
(pl. noun) - Women who make gloves. --Angelina Parker's Supplement to the Oxfordshire Glossary, 1881
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word meatified
(adjective) - Corpulent early 1600s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word milly
deep red
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word barry
deep red
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word watchet blue
light blue
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word grain color
scarlet
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gridolin
(gris-de-lin, or flax blossom
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word feuillemorte
(noun) - (1) A shade of brown of the color of a faded leaf. Anglicised as feulemort, fillamort, filemot, phillemot, and philomot. French, literally "dead leaf." --C.A.M. Fennell's The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964 (2) To make a countryman understand what feuillemorte colour signifies it might suffice to tell him, 'tis the colour of withered leaves falling in Autumn. --John Locke's Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, 1690
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word onwaiter
(noun) - A patient waiter for good fortune. --Alexander Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary, 1911
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word conder
(noun) - A person who stands upon a cliff or elevated part of the seacoast in the time of the herring fishery to point out to the fishermen by signs the course of the shoals of fish. From French conduire to conduct, guide. -- Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word show-hackle
(verb) - To be willing to fight; Isle of Wight. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word groom-porter
(noun) - An officer of the royal household whose business is to see the king's lodging furnished with gambling-related tables, chairs, stools and firing, and to decide disputes arising at cards, dice, bowling, &c. --Ephraim Chambers' Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 1728
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Harrow shootings
In 1592, an archery custom was begun by the founder of the Harrow School in England. Boys competed for a silver arrow, the winner being honored at a school dance that concluded the festivities. The "Harrow shootings" were discontinued in 1771 as the headmaster grew intolerant of the many exemptions from school attendance by the competitors. Beyond this, W. & R. Chambers' Book of Days (1864) reported, "He also observed, as other masters had before him, that the contest usually brought down a band of profligate and disorderly persons from the metropolis, to the demoralisation of the village."
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word shoot-finger
(noun) - This was a term in use with the Anglo-Saxons from its necessity in archery, and it is now called the trigger-finger, from its equal importance in modern fire-arms. The mutilation of this member was always a most punishable offence, for which the laws of King Alfred inflicted a penalty of fifteen shillings, which at that time probably was a sum beyond the bowman's means. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word Book, 1867
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word sun-pain
(noun) - A pain in the head at sunrise; headache. --J. Combs' Old English in Southern Mountains: A Word List from Kentucky, 1916-1923
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word stick-and-rag
(noun) - An umbrella. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word jamrags
(noun) - Anything overcooked. --J.H. Nodal's A Glossary of the Lancashire Dialect, 1882
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word aldermanity
(noun) - (1) The behavior and manners of an alderman. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850 (2) In humorous imitation of humanity. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word orpedship
(noun) - Valour. Orpinn is the participle of verpa, to warp or throw in Old Norse. Hence, orped comes to signify "headlong, daring, or valorous." Pronounced OR-ped-ship. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cleik
Cleiking the Devil - During the third week of August, traditional games, a bonfire in which the devil is burned in effigy, and the symbolic release of a flock of pigeons by St. Ronan make up part of the Cleikum ceremony, which was founded in the 1820s in Innerleithen, Peeblesshire, Scotland, by the likes of Sir Walter Scott, poet James Hogg, and John Lockhart. In this carryover of the St. Ronan Border Games, a boy is chosen to impersonate seventh-century monk St. Ronan, who is remembered for having bested the devil by educating the laity. An elaborate ritual depicts the saint using his crozier, a bishop's curved staff, to grab a boy who represents the cloven-hoofed prince of darkness, an action known locally as "cleiking." Cleik has been used in a number of related Scottish idioms, such as cleik the cunyie, to lay hold of money, and cleik-in-the-back, back pain that feels like a hook catching one.
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word solidungulous
(adjective) - Having hoofs that are whole, or not cloven. A horse is a solidungulous animal. From Latin solidus, solid, and ungula, hoof. --Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word jibber-and-jumbles
(pl. noun) - Sweetmeats, lollipops. Near Stratford-on-Avon. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word December and May
(adjective) - Of a married couple--the husband old and the wife young. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hydegild
(noun) - A price or ransom to be paid for the saving of his skin from being beaten. --William Rastell's Termes of the Lawes of England, 1708
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word heliagraphy
(noun) - The act of fixing images of objects by the camera obscura. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word smoot-hole
(noun) - (1) A hole in a fence, or passage for hares or sheep; Craven. --John Walker's Dictionary of the English Language, 1835 (2) Related to smuce, a hole which rabbits make through a hedge. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word adust
(adjective) - Burnt, scorched; hot and fiery. From Latin ad, to, and ustus, burnt. Hence adustible, that may be burnt up, and adustion, the act of burning, scorching. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Roger's-blast
(noun) - (1) A sudden motion of air, no other way perceptible but by its whirling up the dust on a dry road in perfectly calm weather, resembling a water-spout. --John Walker's Dictionary of the English Language, 1835 (2) Occasionally, a rodges-blast sweeps like a whirlwind over the marsh, wrecking windmills. --G.C. Davies' Norfolk Broads, 1890
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word lourie
(noun) - In many of our large towns, the bell rung at ten o'clock at night is called Lourie, lang Lourie, or big Lourie. Its call is still at least acknowledged to be the signal for respectable people to retire homeward from calls and amusements. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word epithalamium
(noun) - A nuptial song in praise of the bride and bridegroom, wishing them happiness. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word beglammer
(verb) - To bewitch, confuse, dazzle, as with lights. --Michael Traynor's The English Dialect of Donegal, 1953
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hoyning
(noun) - A noise made by a pig. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word smeech
(noun) - A stench; obscurity in the air arising from smoke, fog, or dust. To smeech, to make a stink with the snuff of a candle. Smeegy, tainted, ill-smelling. Connected with Anglo-Saxon smec, smic, smoke; Bavarian schmecken, to smell, and thence schmecker, the nose. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word stupe
(noun) - Cloth or flax dipped in warm medicaments and applied to a hurt or sore; a sweating-bath. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word French nuts
(pl. noun) - Walnuts. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of West Devonshire, 1796
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cephaleonomancy
(noun) - (1) Divination by a broiled asse's head. --Elisha Coles' English Dictionary, 1713 (2) Cephaleonomancy, or the art of divination by an ass' head, is a species of art magic which still flourishes in England. --Robert Southey's Letters From England, 1807
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word neurasthenia
(noun) - Neurosthenia debilitas nervosa. Debility or impaired activity of the nerves. From Greek roots meaning "a nerve" and "disability." --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word aurum potabile
(noun) - (1) Gold dissolved and mixed with oil of rosemary to be drank. --John Coxe's Medical Dictionary, 1817 (2) Among chymists apothecaries, a rich cordial liquor with pieces of gold leaf in it. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dubskelters
(pl. noun) - (1) Persons who ride fast on horseback, and send the wash, or dubs, about on both sides of the way. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) Dub-skelper, one who makes his way with such expedition as not to regard the road he takes, whether it be clean or foul; used contemptuously for a rambling fellow. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word sing small
(verb) - (1) To cease from boasting. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922 (2) Sing small is another phrase which carelessness in pronunciation has changed from the original. The phrase should be "sink small," to be lowered in the estimation of one's fellows. --Edwin Radford's Encyclopaedia of Phrases and Origins, 1945
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cut dirt
(verb) - To go fast, in allusion to the rapid motion of a horse on a muddy road, and to the fondness of Americans for fast driving. --Sylva Clapin's Dictionary of Americanisms, 1902
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word flaybottomist
(noun) - (1) A schoolmaster, with a play on the word phlebotomist, a bloodletter. --John Farmer and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1904 (2) A pedantical whip-arse. --Randle Cotgrave's Dictionary of the French and English Tongues, 1611
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word family boat
(noun) - (1) A boat used in pioneer times by a family in emigrating down rivers, especially the Ohio and Mississippi. --Mitford Mathews' Dictionary of Americanisms, 1956 (2) The crafts are square arks nine or ten feet wide, and varying in length as occasion may require. They are roofed all over, except a portion of the fore part, where two persons row. --James Flint's Letters From America, 1822
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word baseballist
(noun) - A baseball player. --Richard Thornton's An American Glossary, 1912
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word coppernose
(noun) - A name which is supposed to show a partiality on its owner's part for strong drink. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word slippy
(adjective) - Slippery. Not an abbreviation, but a pure Saxon word, and as shown by Mr. Todd, of Old English usage, not withstanding which the great lexicographer characterized it as a barbarous provincial term, from slip. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word leechinge
(noun) - Doctoring, medicinal care. --Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, 1886
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word janty
(adjective) - Showy, flattering. It is probable that when this word was first adopted it was pronounced as close to the French gentil as possible, but as we have no letter in our language equivalent to the French soft g, and as the nasal vowel en, when not followed by hard g, c, or k, is not to be pronounced by a mere English speaker, it is no wonder that the word was anglisized in its sound, as well as in its orthography. --John Walker's Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language, 1835
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word chaffing
(noun) - In some counties, when a man has been guilty of inflicting personal chastisement upon his wife, it was customary for his neighbours to empty a sack or two of chaff in front of the offender's door to signify that thrashing had been done there. This is called chaffing. --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word nott-cow
(noun) - A cow without horns. --Edward Slow's Glossary of Wiltshire Words, Used by the Peasantry in the Neighborhood of Salisbury, c. 1900
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word verjuice
(noun) - (1) An acid liquor prepared from very sour grapes or crabapples. It is principally used in culinary preparations, although occasionally an ingredient in medicinal compounds. --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844 (2) From French verd, green, and jus, juice; used in sauces, ragouts, and the like. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word noisome
(adjective) - At present, offensive and moving disgust; but once, noxious and actually hurtful. Thus, a skunk would be noisome now, a tiger was noisome then. --Richard Chenevix Trench's Select Glossary, 1859
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cappie
(noun) - A kind of beer between table-beer and ale, formerly drunk by the middling classes, which seems to have been thus denominated because it was customary to hand it round in a little cap. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word aveugle
(verb) - To blind; to hoodwink. Refashioned as inveigle; from French aveugler. --C.A.M. Fennell's The Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word beastly drunk
(adjective) - It was an ancient notion that men in their cups exhibited the vicious qualities of beasts. Thomas Nashe c. 1600 describes seven kinds of drunkards: "The ape-drunk, who leaps and sings; the lion-drunk, who is quarrelsome; the swine-drunk, who is sleepy and puking; the sheep-drunk, wise in his own conceit but unable to speak; the martin-drunk, who drinks himself sober again; the goat-drunk, who is lascivious; and the fox-drunk, who is crafty." --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word moak
(noun) - Mist; fog. Moaky, dull, misty, dark weather. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word higlar
itinerant peddler
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word awk
(adjective) - Inverted or confused. Bells are "rung awk" to give alarm of fire. Ray's South and East Country Words 1691 says that awkward is opposed to toward. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word figaries
(pl. noun) - Showy or fantastic adornments. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word by the ears
(adverb) - A familiar and very old phrase denoting to quarrel or fight. It alludes to the practice of dogs which, when fighting, seize each other by the ears. --John Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms 1849
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word horseboat
(noun) - A boat moved by horses. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word snocksnarls
(adjective/noun) - (1) All of a heap; generally used of entangled thread. --Walter Skeat's Specimens of English Dialects: Westmorland, 1879 (2) Overtwisted thread, or worsted, run into lumps. The English drove the variant forms, snigsnarls, snicksnarls, and snogsnarls to snocksnarls. --C. Clough Robinson's Glossary of Mid-Yorkshire, 1876
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word neighbour row
(noun) - In most country districts, a certain distance is laid out by custom within which persons are bidden from each house to a funeral. --Rev. Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word lutherhood
(noun) - Wickedness; from luther, wicked. Also lutherness. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word ascension robe
(noun) - The garment donned by Millerites on the day in 1843 when they expected the end of the world. --Mitford Mathews' Dictionary of Americanisms, 1956
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word three-threads
(noun) - (1) A corruption of three-thirds, it denoted a draught, once popular, made up of a third each of ale, beer and "two-penny," in contradistinction to "half-and-half." This beverage was superseded in 1722 by the very similar porter, or "entire." --Robert Chambers' Encyclopedia, 1874 (2) Half common ale, and the rest stout or double beer. --B.E.'s Dictionary of the Canting Crew, 1699 (3) Porter was last brewed in the British Isles in Dublin in 1973. The last draughts of the brew were consumed, in true Irish style, at a wake for porter, which was held in a country pub near Belfast in May of that year. The mourners wore black bowlers, downed the porter, and consigned its container in a coffin draped in "Guinness black." --Michael Jackson's The World Guide to Beer, 1977
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bijoutry
(noun) - Jewelry; the making or dealing in jewelry. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word mouse-catch
(noun) - A mousetrap 1300s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bearward
(noun) - Bearleader or tender. In the old accounts of Congleton between 1589 and 1613, we find payments to the bearward for fetching the bears to the wakes, "for wine, sack, spice, almonds, figs and beer at the great bear-bait." The Bear's Head and White Bear Inn still testify to the former favorite sport of the town. Erasmus, who visited England in the time of Henry VIII, says there were many herds of bears supported in this country for the purpose of baiting. --Edgerton Leigh's Dialect of Cheshire, 1877
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word knobstick wedding
(noun) - The name given to an eighteenth-century practice whereby the churchwardens of a parish used their authority to enforce the marriage of a pregnant woman. The term "knobstick" was in allusion to the churchwarden's staff, his symbol of office. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hop-merchant
(noun) - A dancing-master. --B.E.'s Dictionary of the Canting Crew, 1699
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word abraid
(verb) - (1) To rise on the stomach with a degree of nausea; applied to articles of diet which prove disagreeable to the taste or difficult of digestion. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) An appetite to eate or drynke mylke, to the extent that it shal not arise or abraid in the stomake. --Sir Thomas Elyot's The Castel of Helth, 1539
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word airish
(adjective) - Cool, windy, damp; said of the weather; Missouri, Arkansas. --Harold Wentworth's The American Dialect Dictionary, 1944
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bondieusard
(noun) - Dealer in articles used for worship in churches. --Albert Barrère's Argot and Slang Dictionary, 1911
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word brangle
(verb) - To kick and knock things to desolation, like a mad horse. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word boy-bishop
(noun) - During the Middle Ages, the custom grew of allowing the choristers of cathedrals to choose yearly one of their number to act the part of a bishop. If the boy-bishop died within the short period of office, he was buried in episcopal robes. A tomb with the effigy of a boy so clothed may be seen in Salisbury Cathedral. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Cape Cod turkey
(noun) - The cod fish--a slang term which is used interchangeably with Marblehead Turkey in Massachusetts. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bauchle
(verb) - To treat contemptuously; to villify. To bauchle a lass, to jilt a young woman. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word court plaster
(noun) - The plaster of which the court ladies made their patches. These patches, worn on the face, were cut into the shapes of crescents, stars, circles, diamonds, hearts, crosses, and some even went so far as to patch their faces with a coach-and-four, a ship in full sail, a château, etc. This ridiculous fashion was in vogue in the reign of Charles I, and in the reign of Anne was employed as the badge of political partisanship. The Whig belles wore patches of court plaster on the right side and the Tories on the left side of their faces or foreheads. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1887
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word drive a coach
(verb) - To find a ready means of evading a law or regulation. Daniel O'Connell (1775-1847) the Irish orator and agitator boasted, "I can drive a coach-and-six horses through any Act of Parliament," in allusion to the loose manner in which parliamentary bills were drafted. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word white serjeant
(noun) - (1) A man fetched from the tavern or ale-house by his wife is said to be "arrested by the white serjeant." --Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796 (2) A mythical person or bugaboo to scare children; one who will take them away if they are not good. --Michael Traynor's The English Dialect of Donegal, 1953
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word kichell
(noun) - (1) A small cake; Anglo-Saxon. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855 (2) It was a good old custom for God-fathers and God-mothers, every time their God-children asked their blessing, to give them a cake, which was a God's-kichell. It is still a proverbial saying in some countries, "Ask me a blessing and I will give you a plum-cake." --John Cowell's The Interpreter: The Signification of Words, 1701
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word truphane
(noun) - A deceiver, imposter; apparently from Old French truffant, or Medieval Latin truffans, a fraud. --Mairi Robinson's Concise Scots Dictionary, 1985
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word brimming
(verb) - A sow when she takes the boar is said to be a-brimming; and the boar is said to brim her. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Christmas wait
(noun) - Wait is an old English word allied to the German wachte, meaning a watchman. It was formerly applied to the court watchmen who blew their horns at certain hours of the night. The name has been extended to any outdoor instrumentalist who performed at night, particularly at Christmas. --J.B. Lippincott's Everyday Phrases Explained, 1913
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word ariolation
(noun) - A soothsaying; a foretelling; sometimes written hariolation; from Latin ariolus. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word raccoons and alligators
(adverb) - It has been pouring what we in England vulgarly term "cats and dogs," but which on the politer shores of the Mississippi might be called "raccoons and alligators." --George Sala's America Revisited, 1883
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Ketherick's pie
(noun) - As big as Ketherick's pie: Ketherick was the first mayor of Plymouth (1493). The pie for his inaugural banquet is said to have been fourteen feet long. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word old man's milk
(noun) - (1) A composition of cream, eggs, sugar, and whisky. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905 (2) Used by the Highlanders after a drinking match. "Flora made me a bowl of old man's milk, but nothing would bring me round." --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word chamberer
(noun) - (1) Frequenter of ladies' chambers; a gallant. --C.T. Onions' Shakespeare Glossary, 1911 (2) One who indulges in wantonness. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850 (3) Chamberers, men of intrigue. Othello. --Rev. Alexander Dyce's Glossary to the Works of William Shakespeare, 1902 (4) A woman who attends to a bedchamber; a chambermaid; a concubine. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893 (5) An effeminate man; a carpet-knight. --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopaedia and New Glossary, 1902
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word griezie
(noun) - A person fond of prying into matters which concern him nothing. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word in the bowfarts
defined by Alexander Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary (1911) as "on its back and unable to rise."
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bowelhive
(noun) - An inflammation of the bowels, to which children are subject. It is brought on by disorders of the milk, by exposure to cold, and living in low, cold, damp situations. It has been said that those afflicted with this disease have often a swelling in the side. Hence perhaps the name. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hoyt
(verb) - Hoyt, or hoit, is to act the romp or hoyden. Winsome and spirited maids go hoyting across the English stage of the seventeenth century. Hoity-toity is an expansion of the same word and originally applied to frolicsome women. The meaning of hoity-toity was altered to become an expression of petulance and surprised disgust, in which function it remains common. The verb to hoit almost disappeared. It is a pity, as it went well with the racing and chasing of "delightfull girles" in an anonymous poem of 1675, The Chase: So ran, so sang, so hoyted the moone's maids/Light as young leverettes greyhounds skip their buskin'd feet,/Spurning th' enamell'd sward grass as they did fleet. --Ivor Brown's Book of Words, 1944
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word corn-coffee
(noun) - A drink made of Indian corn, parched and used as coffee 1800s. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word mack nor mell
(verb) - "I'll neither mack nor mell," I'll not interfere. Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. --F.T. Dinsdale's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Teesdale in the County of Durham, 1849
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word shamocrat
(noun) - One who pretends to be possessed of wealth, influence, rank, or indeed any quality which is only conspicuous by its absence. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cast-iron sweat
(noun) - A highly nervous state; central New York; noted 1912. --Harold Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary, 1944
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cockwalk
(noun) - A fine or blackmail levied on a man who courts a woman residing out of the limits of his own parish. If this be a survival of an ancient practice or custom, it would appear that neither exogamy marriage with nonlocals nor "marriage by capture" were usual at a remote period in this district; but that, on the contrary, the villagers did not, in general, marry outside the limits of their own kindred by blood. --Sidney Addy's Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Sheffield, 1888
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word howd'ye
(interjection) - In what state is your health? Used as a compliment of civility or an inquiry into the state of a person's health; of how, do and ye; whence "howdy". --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word tissick
(noun) - A tickling faint cough; called also a "tissicky cough." --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word snowbroth
(noun) - Snow and water mixed; very cold liquor; Shakespeare. --Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word mumbudget
(adjective/verb) - (1) An expression denoting secrecy as well as silence. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850 (2) To come mumbudgeting, to come clandestinely. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word wise as a goat
(adjective) - In allusion to the appearance of wisdom given by a goat's beard. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fretting-frock
(noun) - A figurative garment which is supposed to clothe a troubled female. "She's got her fretting-frock on." --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word wolfshead
(noun) - (1) An outlaw, meaning a person who might be killed with impugnity, like a wolf. --Thomas Tayler's Law Glossary, 1856 (2) In Old English Law, a cry for the pursuit of an outlaw as one to be hunted down like a wolf; an outlaw. Originally found in the phrase "to cry wolf's head." --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1928
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word inkhornisim
(noun) - (1) A learned or pedantic word or expression; an inkhorn term. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901 (2) This phrase, once common, might be revived to signify pedantic expressions which "smell of the lamp." Shakespeare uses the phrase "inkhorn mate" in 1 Henry IV. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fice
(noun) - An obsolete English word still used in Kentucky and the South for a small dog or cur, sometimes spelt phyce. The word is perhaps one of the most interesting cases of survival presented by American philology. It is evidently the last small remnant of the old English "foisting cur," quoted as "foisting hound" in Wright's Provincial Dialects 1857. Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors 1859 gives nearly the whole process of gradual corruption: "foisting, foisty, foist, fyst, fyce," and Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words 1855 describes the "foisting-hound" as "a kind of lap-dog," so called from its bad habits, which often have to serve as an excuse for the sins of the owner. A "fisting hound" also is mentioned as a kind of spaniel in Harrison's Description of England 1587. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word parish lantern
(noun) - The moon; Northamptonshire, Worcestershire, Hallamshire. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word clocking-hen
(noun) - A sum of money put out to interest in a bank. Aberdeenshire. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word landfall
(noun) - A sudden translation of property in land by the death of a rich man. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word shackling
(adjective) - Rickety; ramshackle. U.S. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1919
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dauled
(adjective) - Worn out; limp; tired. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word chirographer
(noun) - One who tells fortunes by examining the hand. Chirographic, chirographical, pertaining to chirography; the art of telling fortunes by examining the hand. --John Ridpath's Home Reference Library, 1898
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word unscience
(noun) - The absence of science, or knowledge; ignorance; Chaucer. --Robert Hunter's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1894
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word breachy
(adjective) - Brackish; applied to smuggled spirits which have been impregnated with salt-water. --William Cope's Glossary of Hampshire Words and Phrases, 1883
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word karimption
(noun) - A party; a set of people, a crowd, implying unity, relationship, or nationality. As -ption occurs as postfix to other words, such as gumption and conniption, it may have been added in this case to the German-Hebrew word karim or the plural krauwim, relations or the related. --Albert Barrère's Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, 1889
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word peelaflee
(noun) - (1) A light person, and not heavily clothed. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) From the idea of stripping a fly of its covering. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word shift marriage
- On February 22, 1719, a strange socioeconomic ritual was reenacted. According to Alice Morse Earle's Stagecoach and Tavern Days (1900), an odd American custom known as a "shift marriage," which absolved a widow of any previous debts incurred by her dead husband, was carefully observed at a certain crossroad. Justice George Hazard explained that a widow from South Kingston, Rhode Island, was remarried "after she had gone four times across the highway in only her shift with hair low, and no other clothing." Hazard also recorded that a scantily clad Narragansett widow was wed at midnight, "where four roads meet." This risqué practice, which was apparently honored by creditors as well, was carried on sporadically through much of the 18th century in New England and Pennsylvania.
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gwethall
(noun) - Household stuff. The word is used to denote an entire collection, like "bag and baggage." From Welsh gweddill, remnants. Welsh gweddilio is to leave a remnant, and gweddw is a widow, or left person. Gweddill is therefore connected with the root of widow, which seems to exist in most European languages. --G.C. Lewis's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Herefordshire, 1839
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bird-lime
(noun) - A glutinous substance extracted from the inner bark of the holly, used for catching birds. The bark is bruised, boiled with water till very soft, and placed in pits to ferment. After two or three weeks, a curious viscid mass is found in the place of the soft bark; this is boiled with a quantity of water and evaporated to a proper consistence. It is spread on twigs or wire netting. Birds are often drawn to the sticky perches by the treacherous singing of a decoy. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word jarkman
(noun) - (1) He that can write and reade, and sometime speake Latin. He useth these skills to make counterfaite licences which they call gybes, and sets to seales, in their language falsified documents called jarks. --John Awdelay's Fraternitye of Vagabondes, 1561 (2) Yea, the jarkman is so cunning sometimes that he can speake Latine, which learning of his lifts him up to advancement. By that means he becomes Clarke of their Hall, and his office is to make counterfeit licenses, to which he puts seales, and those are termed jarkes. --Thomas Dekker's The Belman of London, 1608 (3) Jark was rogues' cant for a seal, whence also a license of the Bethlehem Hospital "Bedlam" to beg. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1870
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word coney-catch
(verb) - (1) To swindle--the coney, or rabbit, being considered a very simple animal. --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopædia and New Glossary, 1902 (2) It has been shown, from Dekker's English Villanies 1632, that the system of swindling was carried to a great length in the 17th century involving a collective society of sharpers, called a warren, and their dupes, rabbit-suckers--that is, young rabbits, or conies. --Robert Nares's Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word kissing-bee
(noun) - (1) A term used facetiously for a party --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940 (2) "I sat in the corner like a homely girl at a kissing-bee, and had nothing to say." --W.F. Drannan's Thirty-one Years on the Plains and in the Mountains, 1900
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word vagitus
(noun) - The distressing cry of persons under surgical operations. --Robert Hooper's Compendious Medical Dictionary, 1798
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word blatchy
(adjective) - Black, dirty. From blatch, soot or dirt; to smirch with black. --J. Drummond Robertson's Glossary of Dialect & Archaic Words Used in the County of Gloucester, 1890
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word diurnalist
(noun) - A journalist; from diurnal, relating to a day; happening every day. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word moldwarp
(noun) - Mole; from Old Teutonic mold, earth, and worpon to throw up. --Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word firm asleep
(adjective) - Fast asleep is never used. Vale of Gloucestershire. --J. Drummond Robertson's Glossary of Dialect & Archaic Words Used in the County of Gloucester, 1890
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word March-mad
(adjective) - (1) Rash to an extreme, in allusion to March being the rutting time of hares, when they are very excitable. Mad as a March hare, as mad as a hare in the rutting season, when they are wild, flighty and strange. --Rev. James Stormonth's Dictionary of the English Language, 1884 (2) Keep him darke, He will run March mad else. --John Fletcher's Mad Lover, 1647
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bodword
(noun) - An old word for an ominous message. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Houstonize
(verb) - To beat up a Congressman. In allusion to a beating administered by Sam Houston to Representative William Stanberry April 13, 1832. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word California-widow
(noun) - The equivalent of grass-widow--a married woman whose husband is away for any extended period. The expression dates from the period of California "gold fever," when many men went west, leaving their families behind. --Sylva Clapin's New Dictionary of Americanisms, 1902
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word twelve-pound actor
(noun) - A healthy child born in the 19th century theatrical profession. --Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 1951
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word scrogglings
(pl. noun) - The small, worthless apples which are left hanging on the trees after the crop has been gathered; Worcestershire. Scriggins, apples left on a tree after the ingathering; Gloucestershire. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word chicken-man
(noun) - A census-taker; humorous. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word treacle up
(verb) - To rub, polish. Our parents and grandparents polished their furniture with a homemade mixture of beer, treacle, vinegar, &c. --Edward Gepp's Essex Dialect Dictionary, 1923
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word whipjackes
Feast Day of St. Cuthbert, who was invoked to ward of nautical misfortune. Thomas Harman's A Caveat or Warening for Commen Cursetors (1567) told readers of "freshwater mariners" known as "whipjackes"--phony beggars whose vessels were, as Harman explained it, wrecked far inland at the "Playne of Salisbery." He cautioned, "These kynde of caterpillers counterfet great losses on the sea. These wyll runne about the country wyth a counterfet lycence, fayning either shypwracke or spoyle by pyrates neare the coaste of Cornwall or Devonshyre, and lande at some haven towne there, having a large and formall wrytinge with the names and seales of suche men of worshyppe, at the least foure or five, as dwelleth neare the place where they fayne their landinge. And neare to those shires wyll they not begge untyll they come into Wylshyre, Hamshyre, Barkeshyre, Oxfordshyre, Middelsex, and so to London, and downe by the ryver to seeke for their shyppe and goods that they never hade; then passe they into Kent, demaunding almes to bring them home."
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word shake-lurk
(noun) - A false paper carried by an imposter, giving an account of a dreadful shipwreck. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word diver
(noun) - A pickpocket; also applied to fingers, no doubt for a similar reason. To dive is to pick pockets. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dustward
(adverb/adjective) - Towards death or the grave. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1897
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word witch-pricker
(noun) - A witch-finder who discovered witches by pricking them with a wooden bodkin or pin looking for the "witch-mark." Witch-score, the mark made with a sharp instrument on the forehead of a supposed witch to render her harmless. --Alexander Warrack's Scots Dialect Dictionary, 1911
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cutler's poetry
(noun) - Doggerel verse; from the lines formerly engraved on knife blades. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (1596). --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gyst-ale
(noun) - In Lancashire we find the term gyst-ale, which seems to be one of the corruptions of disguising, as applied to mumming. Gyst-ale, or guising, was celebrated in Eccles England with much rustic splendor at the termination of the marling field-dunging season when the villagers, with a "king" at their head, walked in procession with garlands, to which silver plate was attached, which was contributed by the principal gentry in the neighbourhood. --R.T. Hampson's Dates, Charters, and Customs of the Middle Ages, 1841
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word clock-finger
(noun) - The hand of a clock. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word rhyming-ware
(noun) - Composition in rhyme; poetry. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word pure quill
(adjective) - A strange synonym for "the real thing," the very essence of an argument. Also applied to any subject thought worthy of superlative praise. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word ratton-flitting
noun) - The removal of rats in a body from any place they have formerly occupied. Western Scotland. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word blunk
(noun) - Blunk of weather, a fit of squally, tempestuous weather. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Norfolk, 1787
April 22, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word riding a Dutch gal
Western slang: Sleeping with a prostitute
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word possum
Western slang: Buddy
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word going down the line
Western slang: Sleeping with a prostitute
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gal-boy
Western slang: Derogatory term for homosexual men
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fast trick
Western slang: Prostitute
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fancy girl
Western slang: Prostitute
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word buddy!
Western slang for "Hurrah!"
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word doiled
dialectal, British
: confused, dazed
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word inferant
īnferant. third-person plural present active subjunctive of īnferō
April 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word sluagh
In Irish and Scottish folklore, the Sluagh (Irish pronunciation: sɫuə, Scottish Gaelic: slˠ̪uaɣ, modern Irish spelling Slua, English: "horde, crowd") were the spirits of the restless dead.
April 3, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word werian
Etymology 1
From Proto-Germanic *wazjaną, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *wes-. Cognate with Old Saxon werian, Old High German werien, Old Norse verja.
Verb
werian
to wear
April 3, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Catherine Wheel
The Catherine Wheel, also known as the Breaking Wheel, was one of the most widely used torture devices during the medieval times in Europe. It was used to execute criminals and other accused people since the times of antiquity, although its use became more widespread during the medieval times.
April 3, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word prossie
pross in British. (prɒz), prossie or prozzie (ˈprɒzɪ) slang. a prostitute. Collins English Dictionary.
April 3, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word micey
Gannin mad, mentally. -Geordie Dictionary : M-Q
Selected words from Tyneside and the North East
April 3, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word tritonic
of, relating to, or characteristic of the demigod Triton; of, relating to, or characteristic of tritons.
April 3, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word paracausal
Apart from causality, beyond causality
March 26, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word ontopathogenesis
The power to infect existence.
March 26, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word sun-dance
(noun) - A custom was formerly in vogue of rising early on Easter-day to see the sun "dance," the superstitious believing the sun really did dance on that day. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
March 16, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word corvette
(noun) - (1) A young sodomite. --John Farmer's Vocabula Amatoria: A French-English Glossary of Words, Phrases, and Allusions Occurring in the Works of Rabelais, Voltaire, Molière, and Others, 1896 (2) From Latin corbita, a large ship for traffic, French corvette. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878
March 16, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word his-self
(pronoun) - A courtier will say, "Let him do it himself," but the Cockney has it, "Let him do it his-self." Here the latter comes nearest to the truth, though both he and courtier are wrong, for the grammatical construction should be, "Let he do it his-self," or by a transposition of words, better and more energetically arranged, "Let he his-self do it." It must be allowed that the Londoner does not use this compounded pronoun in the mode before us from any sense of conviction. He has fortunately stumbled upon a part of the truth which the courtier has overleaped, as the nominative in the singular number is my-self, and not me-self. --Samuel Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, c. 1803
March 16, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word kleptistic
ADJ.
pert. to theft; related to or consisting in stealing ...1742-3 rare
March 16, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word strepitate
to make a great noise ...1656 obs
March 16, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word impenetration
the act of impenetrating or the state of being impenetrated.
March 8, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word strawberry friend
(noun) - A moocher. Many city people visit their backwoods cousins only when strawberries are ripe to get enough free berries for a year's supply of jam. Ozarks. --Vance Randolph's and George Wilson's Down in the Holler, 1953
February 18, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word botheler
(noun) - Peasant, shepherd. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the First, or Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863
February 18, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word calk
(verb) - (1) To calculate, reckon. --Walter Skeat's Student's Pastime, 1896 (2) Shortened from calcule. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1893 (3) He began to calke how the sonne was in Gemini. --Stephen Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure, 1509
February 18, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word airdrawn
(adjective) - Imaginary; drawn or painted in the air. --William Grimshaw's Ladies' Lexicon and Parlour Companion, 1854
February 13, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word summer's story
(noun) - By summer's story, Shakespeare seems to have meant some gay fiction. --Edmond Malone's Plays of William Shakespeare, 1778
February 13, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word nose-riders
(pl. noun) - Spectacles. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908
February 13, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word drear
(adjective) - Dismal, gloomy, distressful; from Anglo-Saxon dreorig, sorrowful, Icelandic dreyrigr, gory. --Rev. James Stormonth's Dictionary of the English Language, 1884
February 13, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word sweep broom-field
(verb) - To inherit the whole property; to get possession of the whole of anything; Eastern England. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
February 13, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word slart
(verb/noun) - (1) To sprinkle or splash water upon. --C. Clough Robinson's Dialect of Leeds, 1862 (2) A splash of rain or mud. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
February 13, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word drabloch
(noun) - Refuse, trash, as the smallest kind of potatoes, not fully grown, are called "mere drabloch." The same is applied to bad butcher-meat. Teutonic drabbe is rendered dregs, Belgium drabbig, muddy. Thus the term might be borrowed from liquors. --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
February 13, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word seasurrounded
(adjective) - Encircled by the sea. --Richard Coxe's New Critical Pronouncing Dictionary, 1813
February 13, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word seeing the look
(verb) - Noting a family resemblance; usually applied in the case of children to parents or other ancestors. We speak of seeing the "Folger look." --William Macy's Nantucket Scrap Basket, c. 1916
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word jingling-match
(noun) - (1) A diversion common enough at country wakes and fairs. The performance requires a large circle enclosed with ropes, which is occupied by as many persons as are permitted to play. All of these except one, who is the jingler, have their eyes blinded with handkerchiefs. The eyes of the jingler are not covered, but he holds a small bell in each hand, which he is obliged to keep ringing incessantly, so long as the play continues, which is commonly about twenty minutes, but sometimes is extended to half an hour. --Joseph Strutt's Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, 1801 (2) His object was to elude the pursuit of his companions, and he won the prize if he was still free when the play ceased. It was an amusing sight to see the men trying to catch the jingler, running into each other's arms and catching every one but the right one. --Peter Ditchfield's Old English Sports, 1891
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word brundle
(verb) - To be as a child when walking. --Walter Skeat's Glossary of Devonshire Words, 1896
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word glimmerers
(pl. noun) - Persons begging with sham licenses, pretending losses by fire. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word wrawling
(verb) - Quarreling, or contending with a loud voice. Raising a wrow is exciting a quarrel and confusion in the streets. From wrawe, angry. --Robert Willan's List of Ancient Words of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1814
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word clashamaclabber
(noun) - A loquacious person; a gossip. --Michael Traynor's English Dialect of Donegal, 1953
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fidther
(noun) - Rustle; any slight sound, as of a mouse. --Appleton Morgan's Study in the Warwickshire Dialect, 1900
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word nooz'd
(adjective) - (1) Married. --B.E.'s New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, 1699 (2) Noozed, married, hanged. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word trouters' train
(noun) - A train of several cars which left St. John's on the eve of the 24th of May with trouters for the various ponds of their choice, dropping them off wherever they wished along the railway line and picking them up the following night to bring them back with their catches, hangovers, fly-bites, chills, etc. Newfoundland. --D.W. Prowse's Newfoundland Guide Book, 1911
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dool
(noun) - A boundary mark in an unenclosed field. It is often a low post, thence called a dool-post; from Anglo-Saxon dælan. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dunt
(verb/adjective) - (1) To knock with a dull sound, as with the fist in the back or ribs. Stupid, dizzy, or giddy, from an affection of the brain; said especially of sheep. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1897 (2) To stupefy. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830 (3) Stupefied. Dunt sheep, one that mopes about from a disorder in his head; Norfolk. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word danderer
(noun) - (1) One who habitually saunters about. From dander, to stroll, wander; to trifle, misspend one's time. To talk in a rambling, incoherent way. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905 (2) On the dander, on a drinking spree. --Michael Traynor's English Dialect of Donegal, 1953
February 12, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word flat side of the grave
(noun) - This side of the grave. "The schoolmaster hain't got a friend on the flat side of the grave." --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word eggtaggle
(noun/verb) - The act of wasting time in bad company; immodest conduct; explained as denoting immodest behavior in Ayrshire. The latter part of the word is obviously from the verb to taigle, to detain, to hinder. Shall we suppose that the term is formed from the idea of a servant being hindered, or pretending to be so, in seeking for eggs? --John Jamieson's Etymological Scottish Dictionary, 1808
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gullantine
(verb) - To kill, destroy. Evidently from guillotine. --Thomas Darlington's Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, 1887
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word poult
(noun) - A young turkey, fit for the table but not fully grown--a turkey-poult. In Scottish, pout is a young partridge or moor-fowl. From French poulet, a pullet. --Edward Moor's Suffolk Words and Phrases, 1823
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fulhams
(pl. noun) - Loaded dice are called high and low men, or high and low fulhams, by Ben Jonson and other writers of his time, either because they were made at Fulham in London's West End or from that place being the resort of sharpers. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word pseudosophisticate
False or feigned sophistication.
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word zuggers
(interjection) - An interjection. This is a word, like others of the same class, the precise meaning of which is not easy to define. --James Jennings' Dialect of Somersetshire, 1869
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word lionize
(verb) - To treat and exhibit as an object of interest. Originally to take visitors to see the lions formerly kept at the Tower of London. Hence lion-hunter, one given to lionizing people, popularized by Dickens in Mr. and Mrs. Leo Hunter in Pickwick Papers. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word steganography
(noun) - The art of secret writing, characters, or cyphers known only to persons that correspond with one another. Steganographist, an artist in private writing. --Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1749
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word chance the ducks
(verb) - I'll do it, and chance the ducks, meaning "I'll do it and take my chances," is in reference to a boat's crew arrayed in clean white jumpers or "ducks" ready for inspection when it is discovered that some duty involving the possible soiling of their garments has been neglected. They accordingly say, "We must do it, and chance the ducks"--that is, run the risk of our ducks being splashed. --A. Wallace's Popular Sayings Dissected, 1895
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dummocks
(pl. noun) - Legitimate blows given in certain games. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word weaponsalve
(noun) - (1) A salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 (2) The direction, "Bind the wound and grease the nail," is still common when a wound has been given with a rusty nail. Sir Kenelm Digby says the salve is sympathetic, and quotes several instances to prove that "as the sword is treated, the wound inflicted by it feels similar. Thus, if the instrument is kept wet the wound will feel cool; if held to the fire it will feel hot." --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1887
(noun) - A salve which was supposed to cure the wound, being applied to the weapon that made it.
--Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word double cousins
(pl. noun) - When two brothers marry two sisters, the children are known as double cousins. Such relationships are very common in the Ozarks, and are considered somehow significant. In referring to each other these people seldom say simply, "He's my cousin," but rather, "We're double cousins." The word cousin may indicate very distant relationship, but own cousin always means first cousin. --Vance Randolph's and George Wilson's Down in the Holler, 1953
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word deliverhede
(noun) - Nimbleness, agility; 1400s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1897
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Adam's leather
(noun) - The human skin. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word faleste
(verb/noun) - A capital punishment inflicted on a malefactor on the seashore by laying him bound on the sands till the next full tide carried him away. From Norman falese, sands, rocks, cliffs. --John Bouvier's Law Dictionary, 1839
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word eye-bite
(verb/noun) - (1) To bewitch by a certain evil influence of the eye. --Nathan Bailey's Universal Etymological English Dictionary, 1749 (2) Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of Witchcraft 1584 telleth us that our English people in Ireland were much given to this idolatry in Queen Elizabeth's time insomuch that, there being a disease amongst their cattle that grew blind, they did commonly execute people for it, calling them eye-biting witches. --Thomas Ady's Candle in the Dark; or, A Treatise Concerning the Nature of Witches and Witchcraft, 1656
(verb) - To bewitch an animal with the evil eye. Northern England. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word by the villages
(adverb) - To come home by the villages, to be drunk; a provincial expression. If, on the other hand, one comes home by the fields, one has no opportunity for drinking. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word eargh
(adjective) - Superstitiously afraid. This is the word of which eerie is a later form. The Anglo-Saxon form is earh. Aberdeenshire. --Walter Skeat's Student's Pastime, 1896
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word policy of pin-pricks
(noun) - A policy practised by a nation or party in politics of dabbling in minor acts in a hostile manner while they are unable to deal with the larger issues. It was first applied in 1898 to the policy of France in reference to the conflicting colonial interests of that country and Great Britain. The Times quoted this as "a policy of pin-pricks," which forthwith became a political phrase. --J.B. Lippincott's Everyday Phrases Explained, 1913
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word towser
(noun) - A rude, violent person, who pulls others about; whence the common name for a dog who is a good ratter. --Charles Mackay's Lost Beauties of the English Language, 1874
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word tulchan
(noun) - A calfskin stuffed with straw in the rude similitude of a calf, similar enough to deceive the imperfect perception organs of a cow. At milking time the tulchan, with head duly bent, was set as if to suck. The fond cow, looking round, fancied that her calf was busy and that all was right, and so gave her milk freely, which the cunning maid was straining in white abundance into the pail all the while. King James's Scotch bishops were, by the Scotch people, derisively called "tulchan bishops." --Thomas Carlyle's Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, 1845
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word quackered
(adjective) - (1) Almost choked or stifled. --T. Ellwood Zell's Popular Encyclopedia, 1871 (2) Quackle, to interrupt breathing; to suffocate; to choke. East Anglia. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cephalgic
(noun) - A medicine good for the headache. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word mimesis
(noun) - In rhetoric, imitation of the voice or gestures of another. --Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word garderobe
(noun) - Properly, a locked-up chamber in which articles of dress, stores, etc. are kept; by extension, a privy. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bantling
(noun) - A young or small child; a brat. Often used depreciatively, and formerly as a synonym of bastard. Possibly a corruption of German bänkling, bastard, from bank, bench, i.e. a child begotten on a bench, and not in the marriage bed; 1500s-1800s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word festival-exceedings
(noun) - An additional dish to the regular dinner. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word mouth-mauling
(noun) - A volley of abusive language; indistinct drawling utterance. --Georgina Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book, 1879
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word whatish
(adjective) - Of doubtful quality; questionable. --Francis Robinson's Glossary of Whitby, 1855
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word doss
(verb) - (1) To sleep. In the old pugilistic days, a man knocked down, or "out of time," was said to be "sent to dorse." But whether because he was senseless, or because he lay on his back, is not known, though most likely the latter. Formerly spelt dorse; from Gaelic dosal, slumber. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887 (2) To dorse with a woman signifies to sleep with her. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gagnepain
(noun) - A means of livelihood; a working for one's bread. From "gain-bread." --C.A.M. Fennell's Stanford Dictionary of Anglicised Words and Phrases, 1964
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word condog
(verb) - A whimsical corruption of the word concur, substituting dog for cur as equivalent. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word wod
(adjective) - Furious or mad. We yet retain in some parts of England the word wodnes for furiousness or madness. --Richard Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence, 1605
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word manqualm
(noun) - (1) Plague, pestilence; from Old English manncwealm; c. 900-1300s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908 (2) Slaughter of men; from Robert of Gloucester. --Herbert Coleridge's Dictionary of the Oldest Words in the English Language, 1863
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word clazum
(noun) - Force; rush; violence. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word stalkinghorse
(noun) - (1) Sometimes a real horse, sometimes the figure of one cut out and carried by the sportsman. It being found that wild fowl, which would take alarm at the appearance of a man, would remain quiet when they saw only a horse approaching, advantage was taken of it, for the shooter to conceal himself behind a real or artificial horse to get within shot of his game. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859 (2) To supply the want of a stalking-horse you may make one of pieces of old canvas, which you must form into the shape of an old horse, with the head bending downwards, as if he grazed. --Gervase Markham's English Husbandman, 1615
February 11, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word yows
Old word for ewe.
February 9, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word chested
(adjective) - Anciently, when a person was placed in a coffin, he was said to be "chested." Chaucer has, "He is now dead and nailed in his chest." In the heading of the 50th chapter of Genesis, the word is used in reference to Joseph, of whom it is said, "He dieth and is chested." --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882
February 9, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word in scuggery
(adjective) - In secrecy; hid, as from creditors. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788
February 9, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word forjuts
(pl. noun) - The pieces running up between the fingers of gloves. --Angelina Parker's Supplement to the Oxfordshire Glossary, 1881
February 9, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word council-of-ten
(noun) - (1) The toes of a man who turns his feet inward. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887 (2) The toes of a man who walks duck-footed. --John Farmer's and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1890-1904
February 9, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hait-wo
(interjection) - A word of command to horses in a team meaning "go to the left." This was horse-language in the 14th century of Chaucer. Heit scot and Heit broc are names still given to cart-horses. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
February 8, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word penance board
(noun) - The pillory. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
February 8, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word buy the rabbit
(verb) - When a person gets the worst of a bargain, he is said to have "bought the rabbit." From an old story about a man selling a cat to a foreigner for a rabbit. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
February 8, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word plaw
(verb/noun) - To parboil. A slight boiling. If meat seems likely to be tainted before it can be dressed, the cook must "give it a plow" to check the progress of decay and, if possible, keep it a little while at stand. In John Ray's South and East Country Words 1674 the same word is written play. He speaks of a "playing heat," and says that in Norfolk it is pronounced plaw. It may be from some French term of cookery, in books not easily accessible, or it may have descended to us from Anglo-Saxon pleoh danger. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
February 8, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word howdy-wife
(noun) - (1) In the North of England and in Scotland, a midwife is called a howdy, or howdy-wife. I take howdy to be a diminutive of how, and to be derived from this almost obsolete opinion of old women. I once heard an etymology of howdy to the following effect: "How d'ye"--midwives being great gossipers. --John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities, 1813 (2) Brand sneers at the derivation from "'how d'ye'--midwives being great gossipers," but I think that which he supplies is far more ridiculous. I have not been fortunate enough to discover any original to my satisfaction, but I may perhaps be permitted to observe, in defence of what has been so much ridiculed, that "how d'ye" is a natural enough salutation to a sick woman from the midwife, who, by the way, is called in German die Wehmutter, or "oh dear mother." --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
February 8, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word mainprise
(noun/verb) - In Law, the receiving of a person into friendly custody who otherwise must have gone to prison. It differs from bail because a person is, in this case, to be at large from the day of his being mainprised. --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bed of justice
(noun) - This expression (from French, lit de justice) literally denoted the seat or throne upon which the King of France was accustomed to sit when personally present in Parliament, and from this original meaning the expression came, in course of time, to signify the Parliament itself. Under the ancient monarchy of France, a bed of justice denoted a solemn session of the king in Parliament. According to the principle of the old French constitution the authority of the Parliament, being derived entirely from the crown, ceased when the king was present. Consequently, all ordinances enrolled at a bed of justice were acts of the royal will, and of more authority than decisions of Parliament. --William Walsh's Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1900
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word æoliphile
(noun) - A round, hollow metallic ball having a neck with a slender pipe opening to the ball which, being partly filled with water and laid on the fire, the steam or vapourous air is forced out with great noise and violence. It is used to blow the fire, and in Italy as a cure for smoky chimneys. --John Coxe's Medical Dictionary, 1817
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word holy-cruel
l (adjective) - Cruel by being too virtuous. --John Phin's Shakespeare Cyclopædia and New Glossary, 1902
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word nearing clothes
(pl. noun) - The garments or linen worn next to the skin. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word sympasm
(noun) - Sympathetic powder (Pulvis sympatheticus) of Sir Kenelm Digby, was composed of calcined sulphate of iron, prepared in a particular manner. It was long supposed to be able to cure a wound if applied to the weapon that inflicted it, or even to a portion of the bloody clothes. --Robley Dunglison's Dictionary of Medical Science, 1844
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word kecken-hearted
(adjective) - Squeamish, ready to be sick at the sight of food. --Francis Robinson's Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases, 1855
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word feague
(verb) - To put ginger up a horse's fundament, and formerly a live eel, to make him lively and carry his tail well. A forfeit is incurred by any horse-dealer's servant who shall shew a horse without first feaguing him. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word muckeren
(adjective) - Miserly; covetous. --G.F. Northall's Warwickshire Word-Book, 1896
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word resurrection doctor
(noun) - A doctor who buys bodies from grave-riflers. --Eric Partidge's Dictionary of the Underworld, 1950
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word quarroms
(pl. noun) - Body, arms, back. --A.V. Judges' Elizabethan Underworld, 1930
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word sun-suckers
(pl. noun) - The sun's rays, as they sometimes appear in showery weather, popularly believed to suck up the water from the earth into the sun, there to be converted into rain, and held to be a sign of coming showers. --Georgina Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book, 1879
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word flay-craw
(noun) - A scarecrow. --F.T. Dinsdale's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Teesdale in the County of Durham, 1849
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word boist
(noun) - A little extempore bed by a fireside for a sick person. --Samuel Pegge's Alphabet of Kenticisms, 1736
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word earthworm oil
(noun) - A greenish oil obtained from earthworms, used as a remedy for earache. --William Whitney's Century Dictionary, 1889-1891
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word axed-up
(adjective) - Applied to a couple whose banns of marriage have been proclaimed three times in church. Also axed-out. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word nervish
(adjective) - (1) Affected with weakness of nerves. The word seems to be a corruption of nervous, and therefore cut out of its proper place, but in point of fact, the word nervous is a mere modern abuse. Mr. Pegge recommends nervish to be substituted for nervous, to signify weakness of the nerves. And by all means, let it be put down to our credit that we have anticipated his recommendation by many years. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830 (2) To preserve a distinction when we speak of such a man, and of the disorder by which his strength is impaired, we should rather say a nervish man, and a nervish disorder, which termination conforms with similar words, such as waspish, devilish, feverish--all expressive of bad qualities or disordered habits. --Samuel Pegge's Anecdotes of the English Language, 1844
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word tippertant
(noun) - A young upstart. --Edward Slow's Glossary of Wiltshire Words, Used by the Peasantry in the Neighborhood of Salisbury, c. 1900
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cadulix
(noun) - Male genital organ. Central Pennsylvania. --Harold Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary, 1944
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word skare on
(verb) - To splice two pieces of wood together. From Jutland Danish at skarre ved, to join two pieces together. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Dutch leave
(noun) - To take Dutch leave, to desert without official permission. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word mammiformis
(adjective) - (1) Shaped like a breast or teat. --W. Tarton's Medical Glossary in Which the Various Branches of Medicine are Deduced from Their Original Languages, 1802 (2) Related to mammifer, an animal which has breasts or paps to suckle its young; from Latin mamma, a breast, and fero, to bear. --Robert Hunter's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1894
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word pulvillus
(noun) - A small cushion or pillow. In surgery, a small olive-shaped mass of lint used for plugging deep wounds; diminutive of pulvinus, cushion. --Sydenham Society's Lexicon of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 1897
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word swarble
(verb) - To climb up the bole trunk of a tree by the muscular action of the arms, thighs, and legs. --Robert Willan's List of Ancient Words of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1814
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word inchpin
(noun) - The lower gut of a deer. --John Bullokar's English Expositor, 1616
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word heifer brand
(verb) - To tie a handkerchief around a man's arm to designate that he is to play the part of a female at a dance where there are not enough ladies to go around. He is then said to dance "lady fashion," and his reward is being allowed to set with the ladies between dances. This privilege, however, quite often makes him feel as out of place as a cow on a front porch. --Ramon Adams' Western Words: A Dictionary of the Range, Cow Camp, and Trail, 1946
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word prairie-bitters
(noun) - A beverage compounded of buffalo gall and water in the proportion of a gill to a pint, the medicinal virtue of which was thought to have been in an exact ratio to its filthy taste. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bungfunger
(verb) - To startle; to confuse. Also used as an adjective for confounded. --John Farmer and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1890-1904
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Venice glass
(noun) - The drinking glasses of the Middle Ages, made at Venice, were said to break into shivers if poison were put into them. Venice glass, from its excellency, became a synonym for perfection. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word flat-cap
(noun) - A term of ridicule for a citizen. In Henry VIII's time, flat round caps were the height of fashion but, as usual, when their date was worn out, they became ridiculous. Citizens of London continued to wear them long after they were generally disused, and were often satirized for it. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hail-fellow
(interjection/adjective) - An expression of intimacy. To be hail-fellow with anyone, to be on such a footing as to greet him with "hail-fellow" at meeting. --Robert Nares' Glossary of the Works of English Authors, 1859
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word flire
(verb) - To laugh, or rather to have a countenance expressive of laughter, without laughing out. From Icelandic flyra. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word trepan
(noun/verb) - (1) A person who entraps or decoys others into actions or positions which may be to his advantage and to their ruin or loss. Also applied to an animal. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1926 (2) A snare; from Trapani, a part of Italy where our ships, being insidiously invited on the reign of Queen Elizabeth, were unjustly detained. --Daniel Fenning's Royal English Dictionary, 1775
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word swidge
(verb) - To smart violently, as a burn or recent wound. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word clamjaphry
(noun) - A company of people, especially a disorderly or vulgar crowd; a mob, rabble; Scotland, Ireland, and Northumberland. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word thousand-mile shirt
(noun) - The shirt of a railroad boomer laborer was often given this title because as an itinerant worker he traveled light and supposedly wore the same shirt for thousands of miles. --Marjorie Tallman's Dictionary of American Folklore, 1959
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word butcher's mourning
(noun) - A white hat with a black mourning hatband, probably because a butcher would rather not wear a black hat. White hats and black bands have, however, become genteel ever since the late Prince Consort Albert patronized them. --John Camden Hotten's Slang Dictionary, 1887
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word thumbing
(noun) - That species of intimidation practised by masters on their servants, when the latter are compelled to vote as their masters please. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word umfrazzled
(adjective) - Well done, especially an article of food. --Maurice Weseen's Dictionary of American Slang, 1902
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word farrups
(interjection) - (1) A word used in expressions of surprise, chiefly by older people. "What the farrups are ye at?" --Alfred Easther's Glossary of Almondbury and Huddersfield, 1883 (2) Ferrups, an exclamation of mild imprecation, especially in the phrase, "by the ferrups!" Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, Derwentwater. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word kidgie
(adjective/adverb) - Cheerful; in good spirits; friendly; hospitable. As an adverb, cheerfully. Renfrewshire, Kirkcudbright. --Mairi Robinson's Concise Scots Dictionary, 1985
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word out of collar
(adjective/adverb) - Out of harness and the working habit. A horse has the collar slipped over its neck when put to work. --Trench Johnson's Phrases and Names: Their Origins and Meanings, 1906
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word zoundy
(verb) - To swoon. --Walter Skeat's Glossary of Devonshire Words, 1896
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bride-bed
(noun) - (1) In Papal times in Britain, it was considered an act of ill-luck for a newly-married couple to retire for the night until the bridal bed had been blessed. --Edwin and Mona Radford's Encyclopædia of Superstitions, 1949 (2) The pride of the clergy and the bigotry of the laity was such that newly-married people were made to wait till midnight after the marriage day before they would pronounce a benediction, unless they were handsomely paid for it, and the couple durst not undress without it, on pain of excommunication. --Francis Blomefield's Topographical History of Norfolk, c. 1752
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word French-inhale
(verb/noun) - The act of exhaling a mouthful of smoke and then inhaling it through the nose. Considered ultrasophisticated by teenagers. --Harold Wentworth's Dictionary of American Slang, 1960
February 7, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bank-full
Said of a stream when full to the brim. --A. Porson's Quaint Words and Sayings of South Worcestershire, 1875
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word flizzoms
(pl. noun) - (1) Small fragments of very thin things, as of dry leaves or dust of tobacco; from Norwegian flus, Swedish flisa, a scale, fragment. --Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, 1878 (2) Very small flakes in bottled liquors. --Rev. Robert Forby's Vocabulary of East Anglia, 1830
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word ramjollock
(verb) - To shuffle cards. --John Farmer and W.E. Henley's Slang and Its Analogues, 1904
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word right as Roosevelt
(adjective) - Entirely right. --Maurice Weseen's Dictionary of American Slang, 1934
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word tumblingbay
(noun) - In a canal, an overfall or weir. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dorbel
(noun) - A dull-witted pedant; a foolish pretender to learning; from Nicholas Dorbellus (c. 1400-1475), a professor of scholastic philosophy at Poitiers, and a follower of Duns Scotus, whose name gave us dunce. --Joseph Shipley's Dictionary of Early English, 1955
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word creave
(verb) - To pilfer stealthfully. It seems to combine the meanings of English slang crib and Cheshire creem, to hide. --Thomas Darlington's The Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, 1887
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word backrackets
(pl. noun) - Fireworks. --J. Drummond Robertson's Glossary of Archaic Gloucestershire Words, 1890
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word purser's pound
(noun) - The weight formerly used in the navy, by which the purser--an officer appointed by the lords of the admirality to take charge of the provisions and slops of a ship of war, and to see that they were carefully distributed--retained an eighth for "waste," and the men received only seven-eighths of what was supplied by the government. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book, 1867
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word scrunchins
(pl. noun) - Remnants of food; broken meat; remains of a feast. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word betterave
(noun) - Drunkard's nose, a nose with "grog blossoms" or a "copper nose," such as is possessed by an "admiral of the red." --Albert Barrère's Argot and Slang Dictionary, 1911
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word carptor
(noun) - For cutting of meat, persons of rank kept a carver, who was designated the scissor, or carptor. --Eliezer Edwards' Words, Facts, and Phrases, 1882
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word urk
(noun) - A small child or diminutive person. Fairies were formerly called urchins. --Thomas Sternberg's Dialect and Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire, 1851
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word carriage folk
(noun) - Gentry. --Granville Leveson-Gower's Glossary of Surrey Words, 1893
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word callifudge
(noun) - A trick; a hoax; a swindle. --Francis Taylor's Folk-Speech of South Lancashire, 1901
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word footful
(noun) - As much as can be grasped with the foot. --Noah Webster's New International Dictionary, 1952
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Londonoy
(noun) - A Londoner; Chaucer. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word brazzil
(noun) - This word, as far as I know, only occurs in the two following phrases. "As hard as a brazzil," is an expression of frequent occurrence to denote any kind of unusual hardness. If, for example, the bread is overbaked it is said to be baked "as hard as a brazzil," or if the housewife cannot break her Bath brick a cake of abrasive clay used for household polishing easily, she exclaims, "It's as hard as a brazzil." The other expression is "as fond as a brazzil." Here the word brazzil probably means a low, impudent girl, in which sense it is sometimes used still. -- Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word fish-whole
(adjective) - As sound as a fish; thoroughly sound or healthy; early 1200s-1600. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word lerry
(noun) - A lecture; a rustic word from lere, learning, lesson, lore. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word feaze
(verb/noun) - To vex; to be in a feaze is to be in a state of excitement; still commonly colloquial in the States, especially in Virginia and the South. It was used formerly in the same sense as tease, as in teasing wool, but more particularly applied to curry-combing. "I'll pheeze you," says Christophoro Sly in The Taming of the Shrew meaning that he will vex the worthy hostess by staying--like teasel burrs in wool. Another authority regards it as derived from the Anglo-Saxon fysan, used to denote the rapid and noisy movement of water, and from which we get the modern fizz. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gentleman turkey
(noun) - Mock modesty of the Western states requires that a male turkey should be so called. --James Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, 1877
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word stranny
(adjective) - Wild; excited. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word beer-heading
(noun) - A mixture intended to revive flat beer. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word baskwather
(noun) - Dry, withering weather. The wind, when such prevails, blows out of the east and northeast, just as it blew on the prophet Jonah when it withered his gourd. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word overcrapped
(adjective) - (1) Surfeited. --J.F. Palmer's Devonshire Dialect Glossary, 1837 (2) Given to gluttony, overeating, &c. --James Barclay's Complete and Universal Dictionary of the English Language, 1848 The word is related to Latin crapula, which meant excessive eating and imbibing, along with the unpleasant aftereffects. Crapula was itself adapted from a Greek forerunner.
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word draw it mild
(verb) - An admonition to one inclined to exaggerate or use explosive language. The allusion is to beer. "A pint of beer, Miss, and draw it mild." --Edwin Radford's Encyclopædia of Phrases and Origins, 1945
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word spondulicks
(pl. noun) - A term for specie, or money. It would appear to have some connection with Dutch spaunde, "chips," slang for money; and there is a word oolik, bad, wretched. The term probably originated in New York in perversion of these words. This term has become common among English turfites. --Albert Barrère's Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, 1889
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word knick-knackatorian
(noun) - (1) One who keeps a knick-knackatory; a dealer in knick-knacks. Knick-knackery, knick-knacks collectively. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1908 (2) Nicknackitorian, a dealer in all manner of curiosities, such as Egyptian mummies, Indian implements, antique shields, helmets, &c. --London's Annual Register, 1802
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Americaness
(noun) - A female American; a woman of American birth. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word capful of wind
(noun) - (1) A light flaw which suddenly careens a vessel and passes off. --Admiral William Smyth's Sailor's Word-Book, 1867 (2) This phrase for a little wind, hardly sufficient for moving a sailing ship, arises from the following legend: Eric, King of Sweden, was so familiar with evil spirits that whichever way he turned his cap the wind would blow. Hence, his cap was said to be full of wind. --Edwin Radford's Encyclopædia of Phrases and Origins, 1945
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word chubb
(verb) - To lock. Unchubb, to unlock. From the well known make of lock by Charles Chubb (1772-1846), English locksmith. --Paul Tempest's Lag's Lexicon: A Dictionary of the English Prison, 1950 (where is the definition that it's an erection from? Twitter? Really?)
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word anti-centenarianism
(noun) - Opposition to the assertion that the persons from time to time reported to have died aged a century or more had really attained to that age. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1895
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cockstride
(noun) - The length of a cock's stride. "The days are getting a cockstride longer." --Thomas Darlington's Folk-Speech of South Cheshire, 1887
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word farthingale
(noun) - A fourth part of a penny; any very small thing. --Joseph Worcester's Dictionary of the English Language, 1881
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word for all waters
(adjective) - To be for all waters, to be able to turn to any occupation, like a fish that can live in either fresh or salt water. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word unkard
(adjective) - Strange, as an unkard place. A servant is unkard on his first going to a fresh servitude. --William Marshall's Provincialisms of East Yorkshire, 1788
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word do-withall
(verb) - I cannot do-withall, I cannot help it. This phrase is not uncommon in early writers. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word bobbing
(noun) - The action or pastime of riding on bob-sleighs. Bobbing is carried out either on bobs (five passengers) or boblets (three passengers). --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1888
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word hippuric
(adjective) - Pertaining to the urine of horses; hippuric acid, an acid obtained from the urine of horses; from Greek hippos horse, and ouron, urine. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word randirooze
(noun) - A noise, an uproar. Devonshire and Cornwall. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word way-wiser
(noun) - An instrument for measuring the distance which a wheel rolls over a road; an odometer or perambulator. --William Whitney's Century Dictionary, 1889
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cat in pan
(adjective) - To turn cat in pan is a proverbial expression signifying a changing of sides in religion or politics. It has been suggested that it should be cate, the old word for cake, which being baked and consequently turned in the pan aptly elucidates the meaning of the proverb. --William Toone's Etymological Dictionary of Obsolete Words, 1832
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gilravage
(verb) - To hold a merry meeting, with noise and riot, but without doing injury to anyone. It seems generally to include the idea of a wasteful use of food and of intemperate use of strong drink. Could we suppose that the proper pronunciation were guleravage it might be derived from French gueule, the mouth, the throat, also the stomach, conjoined with the verb already mentioned; to waste, to gormandize. --John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1808
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word blonde-bound
(adjective) - Held up by a woman; an excuse for being late on the job. Pacific Northwest. --Walter McCulloch's Woods Words: A Comprehensive Dictionary of Loggers' Terms, 1958
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word culch
(noun) - Great quantity of rain. --Jabez Good's Glossary of East Lincolnshire, 1900
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word belly-timber
(noun) - (1) Food, familiarly. --C. Clough Robinson's Glossary of Words Pertaining to the Dialect of Mid-Yorkshire, 1876 (2) Materials to support the belly. --John Ash's Dictionary of the English Language, 1775
February 6, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word genethliacks
(noun) - The science of calculating nativities, or predicting the future events of life from the stars predominant at birth. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word affray
(noun) - A skirmish or fighting between two or more. It is oft-times confounded with assalt. But they differ in that an assalt is only a wrong to the party, but an affray may also be without word or blow given, as if a man shew himself furnished with armour or weapons not usually worn, it may strike fear into others unarmed. Of the French affres, a fright. --Thomas Blount's Law Dictionary and Glossary, 1717
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word jammock
(noun/verb) - (1) A soft, pulpy substance. --James Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, 1855 (2) To squeeze, press; to beat, crush, or trample into a soft mass. Hence jammocked, worn out, exhausted. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word ackenpucky
(noun) - Any food mixture of unknown ingredients. West Virginia, noted 1928. --Harold Wentworth's American Dialect Dictionary, 1944
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word spurticles
(pl. noun) - (1) Spectacles. --R. Pearse Chope's The Dialect of Hartland, Devonshire, 1891 (2) Sparticles, spectacles. --Patrick Devine's Folklore of Newfoundland in Old Words, Phrases, and Expressions, 1937
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word clagham
(noun) - In Newcastle, treacle made hard by boiling. Called in other places in the North clag-candy, lady's taste, slittery, tom trot, and treacle ball. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Connecticutensian
(noun) - An inhabitant of Connecticut; late 1700s. --William Craigie's Dictionary of American English, 1940
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word chouse
(verb) - To cheat; to defraud. Similar in origin to such words as burke, boycott, and bogus. It is now classed as slang in England but for a long period was much used by standard English writers. In America however, the word is still looked upon as orthodox and is applied to all kinds of fraudulent dealing and deceit. --John Farmer's Americanisms Old and New, 1889
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word ear-biting
(noun) - This odd mode of expressing pleasure, which seems to be taken from the practice of animals who, in a playful mood, bite each other's ears, is very common in our old dramatists. "I will bite thee by the ear." Romeo and Juliet. --Rev. Alexander Dyce's Glossary to the Works of Shakespeare, 1902
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word pinchery
(noun) - (1) A state of extreme carefulness approaching to miserliness. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892 (2) A state of want or deficiency; poverty. Cumberland. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word thorough cough
(noun) - Coughing and breaking wind backwards at the same time. --Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1796
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Friday-face
(noun) - A grave or gloomy expression of the countenance; 1500s-1700s. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word mothery
(adjective) - Thick, mouldy, as beer or vinegar when stale. --John Akerman's Glossary of Provincial Words and Phrases in Wiltshire, 1842
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word awblaster
(noun) - A cross-bowman. --John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1808
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word diddlecum
(adjective) - Half-mad; sorely teased. --Walter Skeat's Glossary of Devonshire Words, 1896
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word kintra-cooser
(noun) - (1) A human stallion; a fellow who debauches many country girls. --John Mactaggart's Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824 (2) From kintra, country, and cooser, a stallion. --John Jamieson's Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, 1879 revision
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word holy-falls
(pl. noun) - Trousers buttoned breeches-fashion, having the flap, not the fly, front. Warwickshire. --G.F. Northall's Folk-Phrases of Four Counties: Gloucestershire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, 1894
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word searisque
(noun) - Hazard at sea. --Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language, 1755
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word beddage
(noun) - Beds collectively, especially in a hospital. How long will it be before the little job of putting on a shirt button is called sewage? --Eric Partridge's Chamber of Horrors: A Glossary of Official Jargon, Both English and American, 1952
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word husy
(adjective) - Having a hoarseness or continuous cough. From German. --F.T. Dinsdale's Glossary of Provincial Words Used in Teasdale, Durham, 1849
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gawmless
(adjective) - (1) Within Lancashire, to gawm is to understand or comprehend, and a man is said to gawm that which he can hold in his hand. For this reason, a person is said there to be gawmless when his fingers are so cold and frozen that he has not proper use of them. --Rev. John Watson's Uncommon Words Used in Halifax, 1775 (2) Heedless; careless; inattentive. Senseless; vacant; lubberly. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1896-1905
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word out of all ho
(adjective/adverb) - Out of all restraint. Derived from the exclamation "ho!"--used to stop the combat at a tournament. --William Toone's Etymological Dictionary of Obsolete Words, 1832
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cush-pet
(noun) - A term of endearment addressed to a cow, the common call for a cow being cush-cush. --Rev. M.C.F. Morris's Yorkshire Folk-Talk, 1892
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word simmiting
(noun) - (1) An inclination or fondness for a person of the opposite sex. --R. Pearse Chope's Dialect of Hartland Devonshire, 1891 (2) Simmithy, to look after admiringly; to pay attention to. Also written simathy. Northwest Devonshire. --Joseph Wright's English Dialect Dictionary, 1898-1905
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dry lodgings
(pl. noun) - Sleeping accommodation without board. --Ebenezer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word jeffing
(noun) - Throwing with quads metal pieces of type. One takes up the quads, shakes them, and throws them after the manner of throwing dice. When the number of quads with the nicks appearing uppermost are counted, the highest thrower being the winner. --John Southward's Dictionary of Typography, 1875
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word dentriloquist
(noun) - One who speaks through the teeth. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1895
February 5, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word gelastic
(adjective) - (1) Of or pertaining to laughter; from Greek gelastikos, inclined to laugh. From Greek gelos, laughter, and skopeo, to see. --Edward Lloyd's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1895 (2) Geloscopy, divination performed by means of laughter; divining any person's qualities or character by observation of the manner of his laughter. --Nathaniel Bailey's Etymological English Dictionary, 1736
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word pannier market
(noun) - The ordinary vegetable or fruit market, in contradistinction to a meat or fish market. --R. Pearse Chope's Dialect of Hartland, Devonshire, 1891
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word cock-sqwoilin
(noun) - The barbarous practice of throwing at cocks, formerly a custom at Shrovetide. This unmanly pastime is, I fear, not entirely abolished in some parts of England. Query--if the word sqwoilin is from cwellan, to kill? Sqwoilin is also used for throwing. --John Akerman's Glossary of Provincial Words and Phrases in Wiltshire, 1842
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word critical days
(pl. noun) - Wherein the disease comes to its crisis, the odd days and 14th especially. --Elisha Coles' English Dictionary, 1713
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word metromania
(noun) - A species of insanity in which the patient evinces a rage for reciting poetry. From Greek metreon, metre, and mainomai, to be insane. --Rev. John Boag's Imperial Lexicon of the English Language, c. 1850
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word beans are in flower
(adjective) - A suggested explanation of a person's stupidity. It was formerly believed that the scent of the flowering bean induced stupidity in the recipient of it. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word Queen's tobacco-pipe
(noun) - A peculiarly shaped kiln belonging to the Customs, and situated near the London docks, in which are collected contraband goods, as tobacco, cigars, tea, &c. which have been smuggled, till a sufficient quantity has been accumulated, when the whole is set fire to and consumed. --Robert Hunter's Encyclopædic Dictionary, 1894
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word streek
(verb) - (1) To stretch or expand; to lay out a corpse; from Saxon streccan. Streeking-board, a board on which the limbs of the deceased are stretched out and composed. --John Brockett's Glossary of North Country Words, 1825 (2) Streeker, a layer-out of the dead. --Francis Robinson's Glossary of Words Used in the Neighbourhood of Whidby Yorkshire, 1876
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word peg away
(verb) - To continue determinedly on one's course; a camping metaphor. --Albert Hyamson's Dictionary of English Phrases, 1922
February 4, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word laqui
“The laqui is a strip of leather, five or six feet long, to each end of which is fastened a stone about two pounds weight. The huntsman, who is on horseback, holds one of these in his hands, and whirling the other, slings the string at the animal in so dexterous a manner that the stones form a tight knot around his legs" - Books on Google Play
Spanish America: Or A Descriptive, Historical, and Geographical Account of the Dominions of Spain in the Western Hemisphere, Continental and Insular; Illustrated by a Map of Spanish North America, and the West-India Islands; a Map of Spanish South America, and an Engraving, Representing the Comparative Altitudes of the Mountains in Those Regions, Volume 2
February 3, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word moon's sphere
(noun) - In the Ptolemaic system, the moon was fixed in the innermost of nine spheres which revolved around the earth. The inflected genitive moon's sphere occurs several times in early plays such as A Midsummer Night's Dream. --C.H. Herford's Notes on the Works of Shakespeare, 1902
January 31, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word braggot
On Mid-Lent Sunday the Welsh customarily drank braggot, a meadlike beverage made of "spiced and honeyed ale." According to John Ray's North Country Words (1691), braggot is derived from the Welsh "brag, signifying malt, and gots, a honeycomb."
January 31, 2018
Gammerstang commented on the word foot-ale
(noun) - (1) Ale given to the older workmen by an apprentice or new hand as an entrance fee on taking his place amongst them. --Georgina Jackson's Shropshire Word-Book, 1879 (2) An old custom amongst miners, when a man enters first into work, to pay his first day's wages for ale. --William Hooson's Miner's Dictionary, 1747 (3) A stranger will generally be asked to "stand his foot-ale." --A. Benoni Evans' Leicestershire Words, Phrases, and Proverbs, 1881 (4) Drink given by the seller to the buyer at a cattle fair. --D. Nicholson's Manuscript Collection of Caithness Scotland Words (5) A fine paid by a young man when found courting out of his own district. --William Dickinson's Glossary of the Cumberland Dialect, 1899
January 31, 2018
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