A bishybarnabee on top of a tittermatorter

[Gob]

Ever seen a bobowler while wearing your baffies in the dimpsy?

Or spotted a bishybarnabee or a dodderman on top of a tittermatorter?

Chances are that unless you’re an expert in Britain’s obscure and endangered dialect words, you won’t have a clue.

But these are just some of the country’s most colourful terms and phrases which will now be preserved for the entertainment and enlightenment of future generations thanks to a project at the British Library.


A word bank of around 4,000 entries submitted by visitors – many confined to a single county or even town – records their meaning for posterity.

So the uninitiated can learn that a bobowler is a name for a large moth in parts of the West Midlands, while baffies are slippers in Eastern Scotland and dimpsy means half-light in Somerset.

The Norfolk term bishybarnabee means a ladybird, and is thought to derive from notorious 16th century bishop Edmund Bonner, known as ‘Bloody Bonner’ for his role in the persecution of heretics.

SOME OF BRITAIN'S MORE OBSCURE WORDS

Baffies — slippers (east coast of Scotland)
Bishybarnabee — ladybird (Norfolk)
Bobowler — large moth (Birmingham)
Brash — cut branches off trees after felling (South Wales)
Brozzen — full (having eaten too much) (Swaledale)
Coopers ducks — the end is nigh, it’s all over (Black Country)
Deff — to ignore, split up, pack in, avoid (Birmingham)
Dimpsy — half light, just turning dark (Somerset)
Dodderman — snail (Norfolk/Suffolk)
Dreckly - later, some time, ‘manana’ (Cornwall)
Gambol — forward roll (Birmingham)
Ginnel — alleyway (West Riding of Yorkshire)
Gopping — unattractive (Manchester)
Guddle — to rummage about (Northumberland and parts of Scotland)
Gurtlush — the best (Bristol)
Gully stottie — bread knife (Ashington, Northumberland)
Kets — sweets (Darlington)
Ladgin — something embarrassing or unpleasant (York)
Nesh — a bit weedy, being cold when you shouldn’t be (Nottingham)
On the box — off sick from work (Black Country)
On the huh — not quite straight (Norfolk)
Pitch — snow that sticks to the ground (West Country)
Spoggy — chewing gum (Grimsby)
Ronking — smelly, disgusting (Black Country)
Tittermatorter — see-saw (Norfolk)
Tiss up — forward roll (Leicester)
Tranklements — ornaments (Black Country)
Twag — to play truant (East Riding of Yorkshire)
Twitchell — alleyway (Nottingham)
While — till, until (Yorkshire)

Dodderman, meanwhile, is a nickname for a snail in the same county, which is also the source of the colourful term tittermatorter, meaning seesaw.

Experts say many local dialects have died off in recent decades, squeezed out by the increasing standardisation of the language thanks to population mobility as well as the influence of television and radio.

But they add that the sheer range of bizarre and impenetrable words submitted by the public shows there remains plenty of life in regional forms of speech.

The database of words was created by members of the public who visited the British Library in central London or attended a series of events at provincial libraries as part of its Evolving English exhibition.

Now linguists will study their origins, how they relate to other words and how widely spread their use is geographically.

For example, the term ‘nesh’, meaning soft or overly susceptible to cold, is linked to Nottingham, but has been employed by writers from other parts of England too.

It was used by DH Lawrence, who was from Nottinghamshire, but also in The Secret Garden, by Manchester-born author Frances Hodgson Burnett, and in the novels of Thomas Hardy, who grew up in Dorset.

While there is plenty of historical evidence for some phrases, others are more recent, such as the Grimsby term for chewing gum, spoggy.

Alongside the terms are entire phrases – for example, someone from Newark in Nottinghamshire might say ‘Man de don’t know what the buer is rockerin’.

That translates as ‘I don’t know what the woman is on about’, using ‘buer’ or ‘bewer’ for woman, and ‘rocker’, meaning to speak or understand.

Ultimately, the completed word bank will not just be of interest to academics, but to anyone from actors wanting to perfect regional roles to foreign call centre workers looking to understand local British dialects.

Jonnie Robinson, curator of sociolinguistics and education at the British Library, said English regional language retained plenty of vitality.

‘Social and geographic mobility nowadays means that people draw on a variety of terms and their default term is likely the mainstream standard term,’ he said.

‘But people can still draw on terms from their local dialects.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1R5CTrztE

[SisterMaryFellatio]

lol dreckly...never met a Cornishman who didnt use that one!

[rubato]

Culture is a living thing. Which means some parts are supposed to die, just like they do in nature.

If words never achieved common currency then they were too weak to do so and deserved to die.

yrs,
rubato absquatulating, stage left.

[Sean]

'Deff' and 'gopping' are the only two there which form part of my regular vocabulary.