1. Introduction
Joseph Wright (1850–1930), the compiler of the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD; 1898–1905), described the dialectal distribution of his words and dialect features mainly in terms of counties, in particular as far as England is concerned. The number of references to counties overall amounts to 63,687 (40,259 to England alone), whereas there are only 15,528 ascriptions of dialect items to larger areas (“regions” and “nations”), such as the Highlands of Scotland and the US, respectively. Exact numbers such as the ones just given can be provided by the English Dialect Dictionary Online 3.0 (EDD Online; Markus, Reference Markus2019a), a database of the EDD, created by a research team at the University of Innsbruck (supervisor of project: Manfred Markus). The interface of this database allows for quick and easy retrievals of English dialect words of the Late Modern English period from 1700 to 1904. Its sophisticated potential has generally been depicted in previous publications (e.g., Markus, Reference Markus2019b, Reference Markus2020, Reference Markus2021a). This paper suggests focusing on EDD Online’s useability as a tool for creating county glossaries, taking the Isle of Wight as a test case.
The EDD, which is the most comprehensive English dialect dictionary ever published, refers to the Isle of Wight (I.W.) 3,887 times. This is quite a number, given that Wright himself was a Yorkshireman and, therefore, naturally favoured northern English counties (cf., Praxmarer, Reference Praxmarer, Markus, Upton and Heuberger2010). By comparison, the Isle of Man can only boast of 1,216 references. This major role of I.W. prompts a few questions: Did Wright have special reasons for being so interested in I.W.-specific words? Did the fact count that I.W. had been part of Hampshire, the “mainland” county facing it, until it became an autonomous county in 1890? Or was it simply the dialectal or sociocultural status of the island that awakened Wright’s keen interest?Footnote 1 A linguistic question to be raised in the face of almost 4,000 references to I.W. in the EDD concerns the validity and interpretability of the statistical numbers just mentioned. Statistics, as we all know, can easily be misleading. To be convincing, the numbers must be made transparent. This then is the second test object of this paper, EDD Online itself, with its tools of quantification.
Quantification and the measuring of dialect distribution (dialectometry) are two of the leading topics in recent dialectology.Footnote 2 With all its ramifications, including the creation of maps based on frequencies, dialectometry is, however, a very ambitious theory. This paper will only scratch the surface of the theoretical and dialectometrical implications of quantificationFootnote 3 and focus instead on the practical aspects of EDD Online as a tool for providing dialect glossaries.
2. EDD Online searches in the (default) OR-mode
The “OR-mode” in EDD Online implies that different objects of search (e.g., dialect areas) are being combined by the Boolean operator OR, rather than by AND or ONLY. OR is the default query mode. Figure 1, on top of the right half, shows the three options, with OR in this case used for our query.
Figure 1. Searching for lemmas/headwords affiliated with ‘I.W.’ in the OR-mode.
The screenshot of Figure 1 may introduce readers who are not familiar with the interface of EDD Online to the EDD’s subdivision of dialect areas into counties, regions, and nations as well as to four further options (the blue buttons on the top right) applied by Wright for different degrees of precision: only the first one, “prec” (for “precise”), implies exact reference to the whole area at issue, in our case the Isle of Wight.Footnote 4 The other three buttons mark a part(ial), fuzzy, or directional (north, south, etc.) reference to dialect areas. Our interface by default keeps all four options activated, which seems justified in the face of the overall small role of nonprecise dialectal references in the EDD.
However, the main point in Figure 1 is the result of our query presented in the retrieval window (the left half). As can be seen, the search provides 1,550 items (i.e., headwords), with 1,549 entries involved.Footnote 5 Both numbers are automatically provided in the dark bar above the retrieval window. The references to the Isle of Wight come in the abbreviated “naked” form “I.W.” or with additional index figures (1, 2, etc.) that stand for Wright’s main sources for the island, with the coded abbreviations identified in the EDD’s Bibliography. These indexed source references have been interpreted, tagged, and counted by the Innsbruck team as information both on the sources themselves and simultaneously on dialect areas.Footnote 6 On this basis of counting, the interface, in the background, sums up all the ascriptions to “I.W.*,” in this case 3,887. The summation is triggered by an option “column 2 counted,” provided in the small sorting menu (the white bar above the retrieval window). Figure 2 shows this rearrangement of the result list of Figure 1.
Figure 2. Search for I.W. words, with quantification of the dialect references involved and the first entry opened.
The entry example ACOLD of Figure 2 reveals the principles underlying our OR-query.Footnote 7 Each headword with at least one I.W. reference is included, no matter whether other counties are concerned as well. Moreover, this “all-inclusive” mode of retrieving dialect words compiles all I.W. words affiliated with the island, no matter for what reason. Figure 3, in the sorting mode that focuses on the headwords concerned by our query, presents the beginning of the A–Z glossary list.
Figure 3. Listing I.W. headwords (based on OR search mode).
Figure 3 shows with the opened entry that Wright also included prefixes such as a- in his lemmas (though lemmatised affixes are extremely rare). One can also see that I.W., in the given case, only plays a marginal role in the entry, as part of the source reference I.W.1 (see the blue marking). It is, however, technically feasible to extract the words of the retrieval list on the left by skipping the affixes and by copying and pasting the individual entries on the right. While this creation of an I.W. glossary means some work for the 1,549 entries, it can be done. But does it make sense?
The possible reasons for affiliating headwords and counties in the EDD are manifold; the ascription of a headword to a dialect source (such as I.W.1) is only one of them. Other reasons are linguistically motivated. The EDD is full of information on pronunciation, spelling variants, types of word formation (such as compounds), etymology, the time when a form was in use, and many other categories of linguistic interest. The dialect marker “I.W.” may, in the context of an entry, refer to any of these criteria. This referential complexity is an asset of EDD Online when it comes to specific linguistic issues (cf., Markus, Reference Markus2021c on the compatibility of source information with other query parameters and filters). However, when the aim is to create a county glossary, as in our case, the entries found in the OR-mode are overloaded with linguistic information that may only marginally be connected with I.W. What we need is a search mode that retrieves unique headwords of the island, excluding both linguistic features as criteria of the affiliation and other counties than I.W. In EDD Online, this search mode is provided by the tool of ONLY-queries.
3. Search for unique headwords in the ONLY-mode
The predictable wish of users to select the lexis unique to a certain area motivated the Innsbruck programmers to implement a button for dialect-specific queries, called ONLY (see the button above the filters). This offers itself as the first step for creating a glossary.
The output of the query of Figure 4 is 137 headwords. This is not even a tenth of the headwords retrieved in the OR-mode (Figure 3), but the good news is that Wright has excluded any other area than I.W. Again the default mode of the interface is to present the words together with the abbreviations for the dialect area or areas selected by the user, as shown in Figure 1.Footnote 8 In the present case, however, users would certainly be interested in the list of the headwords alone, given that all of them have “I.W.” as a dialect marker and that no other county is involved. The little white box on top of the retrieval window allows for access to different modes of presentation. One is column 1 a-z. A short extract of the result is shown in Figure 5.
Figure 4. ONLY-query for I.W. lexis.
Figure 5. Isolation of the headwords concerned by query for I.W.-words (beginning of list).
The 137 words unique to I.W. are presented as a glossary in the Appendix. The chance of easily producing glossaries of this kind and quality—they would generally be more substantial and professional than the glossaries published by the English Dialect Society (EDS) in the nineteenth century—is also enticing in view of other English counties. For Hampshire, for example, the interface delivers 284 headwords and for Devonshire 1,105. Users are encouraged to produce such county-specific dialect glossaries based on EDD Online, on condition that they give copyright credit to their source of information.
Glossaries of this kind would have to be examined manually and in an analysis that focuses on the individual entries. This is the concern of the next section.
4. Interpretation of the glossary
Many samples in the Appendix glossary encourage some linguistic interpretation. ALEER, for example, is an obscured formation of West Germanic origin (cf. German leer) with a reduced prefix a-. Hoping for some systematic insights, users could investigate the etymologies and word formations of the other headwords. Wright provides French cognates for BRISH (‘brush’), RIXE (‘combat’) and SAMPER (< OFr ‘herbe de S. Pierre’), east Frisian cognates for LEBB (‘the stomach of a calf’) and MIZE (Efris. mīs ‘humid’), and OE precursors for ALEER (‘empty’) and SLETCH (‘cease’). This etymological dispersal suggests a multilingual background of I.W. and quite agrees with the hybrid etymological heritage of English as a whole. However, given that Wright was generally fond of adding etymological explanations, the overall poor results concerning etymological influences in I.W. underline what we can observe with the other headwords as well: they are, even if originally the result of import, usually assimilated and sometimes “homemade” and, therefore, hardly attest to language contacts in the past. The isolated situation on the island (at least in Modern English before the nineteenth century) and the frequent change of earlier occupants (on which some details in Section 5) may have, by and large, discouraged borrowings and encouraged other types of word formation.Footnote 9
A more striking characteristic of the glossary words is assimilation, a process of erosion that resulted in many deviant formations (which Wright called “corrupt” forms): PREDNEY is a variant of “presently,” SKURE is another spelling for “secure,” RAATHY is a derivation of “wrath” equipped with deviant spellings (<wr> → <r>, <a> → <aa>). VLUCKER is a variant of “flutter,” SWOP stands for the standard form “sop,” TARNELLY for “eternally,” TINUALLY for “continually.” Another unique form is N-ECKLE, which is an “agglutinated” “an hackle” (meaning “covering”). The most frequent type of word formation to be addressed as a subtype of nonstandard forms is based on aphesis or aphaeresis, the loss of unstressed word-initial vowels or syllables, respectively.Footnote 10 Thus, in addition to TARNELLY and TINUALLY just mentioned, we have GAGEMENT for “engagement,” PUTE for “impute,” RECT for “direct,” SPEER for “aspire,” VENGEFUL for “revengeful,” VICE for “advice,” VOUR for “devour.”
Alongside VLUCKER, some other special spellings that deviate from the standard are phonologically motivated.Footnote 11 For example, the I.W. dialect often substituted voiced fricatives for voiceless ones, such as /v/ for /f/—as in VIRE-PAN (‘fire-pan’), VIRE-SPANNEL (‘dog given to lying before the fire’), VARE (‘fare’) and VARMER (‘farmer’). This feature is generally known from other English southwestern counties such as Somerset. This also holds true for other voiced instead of voiceless fricatives, such as /z/ for /s/. In our I.W.-glossary, the <z>-spellings in MIZE (for moise ‘water’) and PURVIZER (‘proviso’) are interpretable as analogous cases of the v/f-alternation.
Another phonetic feature for I.W., seen in CAA (‘cry like a rook’), RAATHY (‘wrathy/angry’), SPAAN (‘a scolding, abusive woman’), et al. is /a:/ expressed by <aa>-spelling. Such double spellings of vowels are survivals from Middle English (see Markus, Reference Markus, Kastovsky and Mettinger2001). They were mostly practiced in England’s north, because in the area south of the Humber, /a:/ was generally raised to /ɔ:/ (in historical notation: /ā/ to /ǭ/).Footnote 12 The use of <aa> in the south is an example of persistent survival, typical of rural and relic areas and not surprising in the case of an island. On I.W., it is unique when used in diphthongs, as in MAAYCOCK (‘maycock’). <ee> and <oo> are likewise concerned: KEEAP (‘cape’), SOOURDER (<oo> for /ū/; ‘game-cock’).Footnote 13
However, singular observations of this kind based on a relatively short glossary are bound to lack statistical evidence. The words found this way are sparse and could be untypical of the given feature. While the words as such are unique, the implicit types of word formation and the characteristics of phonetics/phonology, spelling, or whatever else may not be I.W.-specific and might well be shared by other areas. What we therefore need is a comparison to other counties. Even the very number of the unique words mentioned earlier (137) is meaningless unless related to the frequencies concerning other counties. Moreover, the items really worth comparing are not the numbers of headwords or entries (their absolute digits depend on Wright’s favouring or disfavouring counties), but the numbers of dialect references that come with the headwords or entries. The Innsbruck team has therefore implemented the possibility of clustering ONLY-queries, that is, of addressing several counties (likewise regions or nations) simultaneously.Footnote 14 Users can, for example, combine all the counties of the south of England—Hampshire, Sussex, Surrey, Kent, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Devonshire, Somerset, Cornwall, and the Isle of Wight—to see where unique words are predominant or, on the other hand, the lexis is more a result of dialect mixture. The map in Figure 6 presents the numbers of unique headwords’ county references normalised in relation to their totals (i.e., the sum of all the references to the ten counties) as well as to the overall references to each of these counties in the whole dictionary.Footnote 15
Figure 6. Quantification of unique words in southern English counties.
The map in Figure 6 reveals a distribution of lexical isolation versus mixture in England’s south in line with what one would expect: the two extremes are Berkshire (in royal blue) with the fewest isolated words, and Cornwall with the most. In the middle, the lighter blue that includes Hampshire, Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Surrey, and the Isle of Wight marks an area of some relative mutual influence (the %-number of unique words is 20–29). We can also see that Devon ranks higher than Somerset, which, for its part, is on an equal level with Kent and Sussex. In sum, I.W. does not have a higher normalised percentage of unique words than the mainland counties facing it.
Apart from this comparison of southern counties with regard to unique words, users may wish to compare the numbers of headwords themselves as attributed to the counties, rather than the county references. The ensuing ranking list (bottom-up) is: Surrey (113), Berkshire (127), I.W. (137), Hampshire (284), Sussex (294), Dorset (362), Wiltshire (365), Kent (488), Somerset (746), Devonshire (1,105), and Cornwall (1,439). By and large, these figures confirm the earlier results based on county references: the Isle of Wight did not harbor many unique words but is, alongside Surrey and Berkshire, at the ranking list’s lower end. The marginal counties of the south, that is, Somerset, Devonshire and Cornwall in the west and Kent in the east, dominate the scene concerning lexical specificity. The counties in the mid-south were, like the Isle of Wight, less productive in coining or keeping words of their own.
However, the latter ranking list just described is, in my view, of limited value because it is not based on normalised figures of usage frequency, whereas those of the county references are. Another, practical, advantage of the reference figures is, of course, that they do not have to be gleaned manually but are provided by the EDD software and that they can automatically be transferred to a map. The main drawback of simply counting words is, however, a conceptual one: when one thinks about it, unique words of an area are never equally integrated in people’s usage. They may be part of everyday lexical usage or marginal, and there may be just one source of evidence in the EDD or several sources. It therefore makes sense not to consider them as if they were all alike but to “weigh” them according to their degree of usage integration. The more often Wright found reasons for ascribing them to I.W., the more evidence this is for their lexical relevance.
EDD Online harbors many types of statistical data beyond headwords and county references. Within seconds, users can retrieve seventy-two derivations, 208 compounds, 333 combinations,Footnote 16 279 phrases, 739 variants (with evidence of the spellings tackled earlier), 244 headwords with an etymological marker, and 1,460 references to etymological precursors up to 1500, all and sundry attributed to I.W. On this basis we could raise many questions on linguistic features of the I.W. dialect. This paper, however, has focused on the glossary as a whole, its production, and the possibility of drawing some provisional conclusions on lexical features. An in-depth study of detailed linguistic features must be undertaken on another occasion.Footnote 17
The task that remains in this paper is an interpretation of our observations in relation to I.W.
5. The Isle of Wight: Geography, history, and its dialect lexis
For readers less familiar with the geography of Britain, Figure 7 presents a simple map, free of copyright restrictions, of I.W. and its English mainland surroundings. The Isle of Wight, with its geographical position in the Channel off the coast of Hampshire, its mild climate, and its natural beauty, has always attracted occupants and settlers, and later, tourists and residents.Footnote 18 Its history of the last two thousand years reveals that it was of interest to the Romans, the Frisians (who, as seafarers and traders, were immediate neighbors),Footnote 19 the Jutes (who settled along the southern English coast from Kent to Hampshire),Footnote 20 and the West Saxons (who conquered the island in 688 under King Ceadwalla). The new millennium brought the influx of the Danes (Cnut), the Anglo-Normans with their French dialect, and the French of the Hundred Years’ War. Later, I.W. was administered as part of Hampshire, so that some linguistic influence from the mainland can be assumed. In the 19th century, I.W. became a favourite destination of holidaymakers and tourists, and many well-to-do people, including Queen Victoria, had a residence there. In the early 1800s, the first steamship ferry began to operate, one of the reasons why the island is now relatively densely populated (372/km2).Footnote 21
Figure 7. The Isle of Wight: geographical location (with pre-1974 counties).
In sum, the history of the island is marked by many new settlers, and different cultures and languages. In the 19th century, it was mainly affected by the influx of residents and tourists from the British mainland. Though an island, it did not remain a rural retreat area. Its most striking dialect features in Late Modern English accord with this role of attracting many, from conquerors and monarchs to Jimi Hendrix, who played his last concert there.
Given this mixed historical and cultural background, it does not come as a surprise that the glossary of the I.W. is only moderately dialect-specific. Words pass language borders quickly, so that a comparison of the unique words of I.W. with those of the other southern English counties, normalised by correlative usage frequencies, led to the conclusion that I.W. was lexically less isolated than, for example, Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset, on the one hand, and Kent, on the other hand. Instead, our quantification reflects the affinity to the mainland counties north of I.W. (Hampshire, Dorsetshire, and so on). Only Berkshire turned out to be even more assimilated in its lexis to its surroundings (in this case wider-London).Footnote 22
As regards the glossary samples in detail, this paper’s analysis turned out to be “eclectic” (i.e., “including a mixture of many different things,” definition in DCE, 2009). Etymologically, the words confirmed the multicultural background of the Isle of Wight, with some Old French, Frisian, Juto-Kentish, and West Germanic cognates or precursors. In terms of word formation, some of the words were the product of aphetic or aphaeretic processes, as they are also common in other dialects. The most prominent I.W.-specific features could be found in a few spelling idiosyncrasies (double vowels for [length], voiced fricatives for voiceless ones, and agglutination of the /n/ of the indefinite article an before vowel-initial nouns), but again nearly all these characteristics were shared by various other counties of the English south. Only double spellings within diphthongs seem to be I.W.-specific, but the glossary as a corpus basis proved to be too small for conclusive evidence, and the issue would deserve an in-depth and systematic analysis of the spellings and sound patterns on the Isle of Wight. Such an analysis would have to be based on all orthographic features in EDD Online attributed to the Isle of Wight, irrespective of whether the headwords involved were unique or not (see Markus, Reference Markusforthcoming).
6. Conclusion
This paper has tested the chance spontaneously to produce county glossaries of a better quality than what the EDS glossarists of the 1850s to 1890s provided.Footnote 23 The pieces of information given in the EDD’s entries allow for selective conclusions in the domains of etymology, orthography, and, up to a point, word formation, but it has become obvious that a county glossary has its limits and that the filter inventory of EDD Online would allow for in-depth studies of linguistic features within the domains just mentioned and beyond (e.g., in pragmatics).
In concrete terms, the analysis has shown that the dialect of the Isle of Wight, despite more than the hundred words uniquely attributable to it, does not have a very marked lexical profile of its own. Instead, it shares most of its dialect words with other counties, some 1,400 as a subset of the 1,550 headwords retrieved by EDD Online in its OR-mode. Though an island, I.W. does not, in terms of a quantified uniqueness of the lexis, have more words “of its own” than the opposite counties on the mainland (Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, and Surrey) and fewer such words than the counties in the southwest and in the southeast. It combines some traditional modes of spelling and etymological traces of languages or dialects of former settlers with the tendency to clip and, thus, uproot words. The spelling variants have revealed voicing and aphesis as the main phonological/phonotactic characteristics, but they proved to be far from I.W.-specific. Orthographic doublets of vowels (<aa>, <oo>, and <ee>) are likewise generally nonspecific except in digraphs of the type <aae>, where they apparently are. However, the text basis for evidential conclusions is too small. In any case, the <aa>-spelling is a relic from Middle English.
By and large, however, I.W. was, by the nineteenth century, not an island of lexical survivals, but—both lexically and administratively—a part of Hampshire. The overall moderate specificity of its dialect, if we dare to give reasons, is a result of its historically conditioned mixed and non-autonomous nature. Owing to its continuing popularity from the eighteenth century on and, in particular, since the nineteenth, the Isle of Wight was bound to lose the distinctive features it may have had in the past.
A substantial glossary of the (unique) headwords of the Isle of Wight in use during the Late Modern English period is, however, only a first step in the right direction. There are many open questions, concerning linguistic patterns, distinctive features, and quantities of distribution, questions that the parameters and filters implemented in EDD Online are ready to help answer. Beyond its lexis, that is, in phonetics, orthography, word formation, and other linguistic domains, the Isle of Wight may, at second sight in the future, prove to have unique traits of its own.
Acknowledgments
EDD Online was enabled and financially supported by the Austrian Science Fund. Without this support, the present paper would not have been written.
Appendix. Unique EDD words on the Isle of Wight (copied from EDD Online)
ALEER, adj. I.W. [əliə˙(r).] Empty; unladen.
I.W.1 Goo whooam wi’ the wagon aleer.
[A- prob. repr. OE. ge; cp. gelǣre, empty; or the pref.
may = on (the pref. of state or condition). See Leer.]
ANDIER-DOGS, sb. pl. I.W. Andirons.
I.W.1 Anjur-dogs, kitchen utensils for the spit to run on.
[For etym. see Andirons, and cp. An-dogs.]
BACCOBOLTS, sb. pl. I.W. Typha latifolia, or
common bulrush.
I.W. So called from the spikes resembling a roll of tobacco.
[See Bolt.]
BINDER, sb.2 I.W. [bai˙ndə(r).] A large quantity,
esp. of food.
I.W.1 A pretty good binder of it; I.W.2 I ded take in a binder.
BLETTERS, sb. pl. I.W.1 Small pancakes, flitters,
(s.v. Vlitters.)
BOMESWISH, adv. I.W. At full speed, headlong.
See Bonneswish.
I.W.2 I met wold varmer Taalor and hes missus in their new
pony caart gwyne bomeswish over Staplers.
BONNESWISH, adv. I.W. Rapidly, swiftly, in phr.
to go bonneswish. [Perh. misprint for bomeswish, q.v.]
I.W.1 There they goos bonneswish.
BOTHRESH, sb. I.W.1 The squalling thrush, ‘bull-thrush,’
q.v.
BOZZOM, sb. I.W. Also written bozzum. Name
given to the plants (1) Chrysanthemum segetum; (2) Chrysanthemum leucanthemum
(C.J.V.). Cf. buddle.
BRISH, sb. I.W.12 [briʃ.] A brush.
[OFr. broisse, a brush (Hatzfeld, s.v. Brosse).]
CAA, v. I.W. Also written kaa I.W.1 To cry like
a rook.
I.W.1 What bi’st caaun about like that vor?
CHINKERS, sb. pl. I.W.2 [tʃi˙ŋkəz.] Chinks, fissures.
CHOPPEKIN, sb. I.W. [tʃo˙pəkin.] The chap or
under-jaw of a pig salted and smoked.
I.W.2 We had a choppekin that day vor dinner.
CHUTE, sb. I.W. [Not known to our correspondents.]
A steep, hilly road. (Hall.)
CLUNGE, v. I.W.1 [klɐnʒ.] To crowd; to squeeze
closely together.
[Conn. w. liter. E. cling (vb.). Heavy clunging mists,
More Song Soul (1647) 11. (N.E.D.)]
CLUTTERS, sb. pl. I.W.12 [klɐ˙təz.] Part of the
tackling of a plough or harrow.
COAST, v. I.W. In phr. To coast about. Of a hawk:
to fly so as to keep at a distance.
I.W.1 A hawk or kite flying round a farmyard is said to be
‘cooastun about.’
COCKY-BABY, sb. I.W. The plant Arum maculatum
(B. & H.).
‡CONTRAVESS, adv. I.W.1 [Not known to our
correspondents.] Quite the reverse.
CRABBUN, sb. I.W.1 [kræ˙bən.] A dunghill fowl;
a coward.
[A form of liter. E. craven, cowardly, a coward, applied
technically to a cock that is ‘not game.’ No cock of mine,
you crow too like a craven, SHAKS. T. Shrew, ii. i. 228.
ME. crauant, vanquished, defeated (Mätzner).]
CRISH, sb.1 I.W.1 [kriʃ.] A crash.
CURRIDGE, v. I.W. [kə˙ridʒ.] To encourage.
I.W.1 Why dosn’t curridge’n on to fight?
DACK, sb. and v. I.W. [dæk.] 1. sb. A blow, esp.
a gentle or slight blow, such as washerwomen give fine
things in washing.
I.W.1 I’ll ghee thee a dack wi’ the zull paddul, 49; I.W.2 I’ll gie
ee a dack wi’ the prong-steel if thee doesn’t mind.
2. v. To touch gently; to dab with a cloth; to anoint.
I.W. (J.D.R.); I.W.2 My vinger is miserable bad: just dack en
vor me.
DEYAN, v. I.W.1 [dē˙ən.] Used imprecatively, in
the same way as ‘damn,’ ‘confound.’
Odd deyan thee. I’ll be deyand if I doant.
Hence Deyannashun, sb. damnation.
Odd deyannashun seyze thee.
DOMP, adj. I.W.1 Also in form dompy. [do˙mp,
do˙mpi.] Short, stunted, ‘dumpy.’
DRAUGHTY, adj. I.W. [drā˙ti.] Windy, outdoors
as well as indoors. (J.D.R.)
DRILLEN, ppl. adj. I.W.2 [dri˙lən.] Dripping with wet.
[With that, swift watry drops drill from his eye, Heywood
Troia (1609) (Nares).]
DRILLING, prp. I.W. Dripping, soaking wet. Cf.
dreening, s.v. Dreen, v.
They be all a-drillen with wet, Gray Ribstone Pippins (1898) 33.
DRUSS, sb. I.W.12 [drɐs.] A slight slope or descent
on the road.
DWYES, sb. pl. I.W. [dwaiz.] Eddies.
From the dwyes of the withy-bed when they dived, Moncrieff
Dream (1863) l. 47; I.W.12
ENNY, adv. I.W. [ə˙ni.] Only. (J.D.R.); I.W.1
FLANYER, v. I.W.2 To flourish, brandish.
He’s out there flanyeren about wi’ a sparrod.
FLUSTERGATED, pp. I.W. Blustering. (Hall.)
‡FOUNDER, sb. I.W. Meaning unknown.
The path by a founder of hammock was shut, Moncrieff Dream
(1863) l. 6.
GAGEMENT, sb. I.W. Written gaaigement I.W.1
An engagement, a fight. (Hall.), I.W.1
GENGE, sb. I.W. Also written geyenge, ghenge
I.W.1 [gen(d)ʒ.] Depth of soil; the depth of the furrow.
Also in comb. Plough-genge.
I.W.1 The rain esn’t gone into the ground not plowghenge deep;
I.W.2 I must alter my genge when I gits out end [I must alter the depth of the furrow when I get to the end of the field].
‡GRISKIN, sb. I.W. Meaning unknown.
A griskin on her head bomes, Moncrieff Dream (1863) 1. 40.
GRUMPSHUN, sb. I.W.1 Foresight; ‘gumption.’
HALPED, ppl. adj. I.W. Crippled. (Hall.)
HEARLED, pp. I.W. With up; perplexed, confused.
See Harl, v. 2.
I be mis’ble hearled up wi’ lies vokes tells, Gray Ribstone
Pippins (1898) 141.
HUNCHED-UP, pp. I.W. [ɐnʃt.] Of a crop of apples,
potatoes, &c.: diminished in size. (J.D.R.), I.W.1 See
Hunch, sb.1 2.
HURDLE-SHELL, sb. I.W.2 Tortoiseshell; gen. used
attrib. of colour, lit. reddle-shell.
I got zummet like a cat now, a hurdle-shell one.
INFORMATION, sb. I.W. Gray Ribstone Pippins
(1898) 140.
INLESS, conj. I.W. [inle˙s.] Unless. (J.D.R.), I.W.1
[In less, for the older on lesse, on a less supposition
that; see Skeat Etym. Dict. (s.v. Unless).]
KEEAP, sb. I.W.1 [kiəp.] 1. The cape of a coat.
2. A landmark.
KITES, sb. pl. I.W. The dead boughs of a tree; also
in comb. Kite boughs.
I.W.1; I.W.2 I got a bundle o’ kite boughs.
KITTLES, sb. pl. I.W.2 Strings for tying the mouths
of sacks.
LARBETS, sb. pl. I.W.2 [lā·bəts.] The testicles of
lambs.
LEBB, sb. I.W. [leb.] The stomach of a calf.
Reserving the lebb, pluck, and haslet, Moncrieff Dream (1863)
l. 36; I.W.12
[EFris. lebbe, leb, ‘kälbermagen’ (Koolman); Du. lebbe,
‘runnet’ (Hexham).]
LEEWARD, adv. I.W. [lī˙wəd.] In phr. to go to leeward,
to go to the bad. (J.D.R.)
LOOP, v.3 I.W.1 [lūp.] To elope.
She loop’d away wi’ un.
LUC(K, sb. I.W. [lɐk.] A pool of water left behind
by the receding tide. (J.D.R.), I.W.12
LUCKEY, adj. I.W.2 Morose, sulky.
He sims to be luckey about zummet or nother.
LURRY, sb.2 I.W.2 [lə˙ri.] Loose talk.
He ded goo on wi’ some pretty lurry, I can tell ye.
[To turn prayer into a kind of lurrey, Milton Eikonoklastes
(1649) xvi.]
MAAMOUTH, sb. I.W.2 A silly, talkative person.
Hence Maamouthed, ppl. adj. talking foolishly, stupid.
Cf. mawmooin.
Ded ye ever zee sich a gurt zote, maamouthed thing as she is?
MAAYCOCK, sb. I.W.1 A conceited fellow; a coxcomb.
[A meacock wretch can make the curtest shrew, SHAKS.
T. Shrew, II. i. 315.]
MARINERS, sb. pl. I.W.2 A game resembling ‘Fox
and geese.’
MILLET, sb. I.W. The wood club-rush, Scirpus sylvaticus.
(B. & H.)
MIT, sb.3 I.W. [mit.] A maggot. (C.J.V.)
MIZE, sb. and v. I.W. Also in form moise I.W.1
[maiz.] 1. sb. Water. I.W.1 Cf. mizzle, v.1, miz-wet.
2. v. To ooze; to discharge slowly. (J.D.R.), I.W.12
[1. Cp. EFris. mīs, ‘feucht’; mīsīg (Koolman).]
MUD(D, sb. I.W. [mɐd.] A silly, thoughtless, stupid
person.
(Hall.) I.W.1; I.W.2 Gen. applied to a child. ‘Ah, ye zote
mud, don’t da that.’
MUDGETTY, adj. I.W.2 [Not known to our correspondents.]
Of straw: broken, short, as trodden by cattle.
MUGGLETON, sb. I.W.1 An old name for a rat, prob.
only used in nursery stories.
MUMMY, adj. I.W. [mɐ˙mi.] Dusk, dark; twilight.
It begins to get mummy (J.D.R.); I.W.1; I.W.2 ‘Twas gitten
mummy avore I come away.
N-ECKLE, sb. I.W.2 [ne˙kl.] A house; a dwelling.
See Hackle, sb.1 2.
NEYARES, sb. pl. I.W. The nostrils.
I.W.1 [Nares, the nostrils of a hawk (Hall.).]
[There is a Machiavelian plot, Tho’ ev’ry nare olfact it
not, Butler Hudibras (1664) I. i. 742.]
NUBBY-JOE, sb. I.W.2 [nu˙bi-dʒō.] A walking-stick
having a large knob at the end. See Knobby, 3.
If I onny gits ‘long zide on ‘en wi’ my nubby Joe he’ll zoon be
afeared o’ me.
OVERER, sb. I.W. A settler from Great Britain.
Life of Freeman (1895) II. 51. Cf. overun.
OVERUN, adj., adv. and sb. I.W. [ō˙vərɐn.] 1. adj.
Coming from the mainland across the water, not native
to the island.
They’m better than the overun ducks (J.D.R.); I.W.1; I.W.2
Overun feller.
2. adv. Over, too, very.
(J.D.R.); I.W.1 ‘It don’t look so overun toppun,’ i.e. so over
well.
3. sb. Any person or thing that is not native to the
island; anything coming from the mainland. Also called
Overuner or Overner.
(J.D.R.); I.W.2 I wish the wind had capsized they there
overners comen across. What do they wunt over here, tryen to
take the bread out o’ vokes’ mouths?
PINE-RAFT, sb. I.W. See below.
Part of the silicified trunk of a coniferous tree, probably allied
to the pine; from the ‘pine-raft’ which covers the shore between
high and low-water marks, at Brook Point… This sandstone, which
forms Brook Point, is the lowest bed seen at the base of the cliff,
and reposes on the red and green variegated marls underlying the
sandstone with the trunks of the trees forming the pine-raft,
Ramsay Rock Spec. (1862) 151.
POKEASSIN, prp. I.W. Also written pokassun I.W.1
[pō·kəsin.] 1. Prying about; following people slyly to
find out what they are doing; gen. with about. I.W.12
2. Pottering about, spending time to no purpose. I.W.2
POLEAPS, sb. I.W.12 Also written polehaps I.W.2
[pō˙l-æps.] A leather strap fastening the harness at the
top of a horse-collar; lit. ‘pole-hasp.’ See Hasp, sb.1
PRAJANT, adj. I.W.1 [prē˙ðʒənt.] ‘Swaggering’;
conceited.
PRANKLE, sb. I.W. [præ˙ŋkl.] A prawn. (Hall.),
(C.J.V.)
PRANKLE, v. I.W. [præ˙ənkl.] To prance. (C.J.V.)
PREDNEY, adv. I.W.2 [pre˙dni.] A corruption of
‘presently.’ ‘I’ll gi’ ye a belting predney.’
PURVIZER, adv. I.W.1 With a proviso.
PUSSIKEY, sb. and adj. I.W. [pɐ˙siki.] 1. sb. A
little, short, conceited person. I.W.12 2. adj. Small
and self-important.
I.W.2 She’s a regular pussikey little bit o’ goods.
PUTE, v. I.W.1 [piut.] To impute.
QUILT, v.3 I.W.12 [kwilt.] To cover a ball with twine.
QUILT, adj. I.W. [kwilt.] Fatigued; unfit for work.
(Hall.), I.W.1
RAATHY, adj. I.W.1 [rā˙þi.] Angry, full of wrath;
a deriv. of ‘wrath.’
RASPBERRIES AND CREAM, phr. I.W. The hemp
agrimony, Eupatorium cannabinum. (B. & H.)
RECT, v. I.W.1 A shortened form of ‘direct.’ Hence
Rectun-pooast, sb. a signpost.
RENYARD, sb. I.W.12 [re˙njəd.] A dial. form of
‘reynard,’ a fox.
RIG, v.5 I.W.1 [rig.] To mark sheep.
RIVE, adj. I.W. [raiv.] Amorous. (C.J.V.), I.W.1
RIXE, sb. I.W. [riks.] A pugilistic contest. (W.W.S.)
Cf. rixy, sb.2 and adj.1 [Fr. rixe, a combat.]
ROUNTY, adj. I.W.1 [re˙unti.] Of marshes: rough.
ROXELL, v. I.W. Also written roxall. [ro˙ksl.] To
wrestle. (C.J.V.), I.W.2 See Rossle, 2.
RUDDER, v. I.W.2 [rɐ˙də(r).] To shake the head.
The paason ruddered his head at ‘en.
SAMPER, sb. I.W.12 Also written sampur I.W.2
[sæ˙mpə(r).] Samphire.
[Sampier herbe, Baret (1580); herbe de S. Pierre, sampire (COTGR.).]
SANGLE, sb. I.W.1 [sæ˙ŋgl.] A drunken bout.
SCANTWAYS, adv. I.W. Obliquely. (J.D.R.)
SCOGGEL, v. I.W.2 [sko˙gl.] To eat voraciously;
to gulp down. ‘They scoggelled up the lot.’
SCRANNEL, v. I.W.2 [skræ˙nl.] To eat greedily;
to swallow up.
SHELT, v. I.W. [ʃelt.] with in: of days: to grow
shorter, to become dusk earlier, to shorten.
I.W.1 The days be sheltun in; I.W.2 Aater Michaelmas the
days begin shelten in vast.
SHONTO, sb. I.W. A donkey. (Hall.), Wright.
? Misprint for ‘shouto.’
SHOUTO, sb. I.W.1 A donkey. ? A misprint for ‘shonto.’
SHROKE, ppl. adj. I.W. [ʃrōk.] Shrivelled, withered.
Cf. shrockled.
I.W.1; I.W.2 They there apples be all shroke up to nothen.
SKILTER-VAMP, sb. I.W.1 A half-boot laced in
front; ? misprint for ‘skitter-vamp’ (q.v.).
SKIMMURTON, sb. I.W.1 [ski˙mətən.] A skeleton.
SKUFFY, adj. I.W.1 [skɐ˙fi.] In a scurvy state.
SKURE, v. I.W.1 [skiu˙ə(r).] A dial. form of ‘secure.’
SLETCH, v. and sb. I.W. [sletʃ.] 1. v. To cease,
stop. Cf. sleck, v.1
I.W.1 It raained aal day without sletchun; I.W.2
2. sb. Cessation.
I.W.1 There’s noo sletch in ut; I.W.2 ‘Twas hard slaavery and
noo sletch in it, vrom mornen to night.
[OE. ge-sleccan, to make slack; to weaken (B.T.).]
SMOLCHE, v. I.W.1 [smoltʃ.] To discolour or daub
with paint or dirt.
SNAPSEN, sb. I.W. [snæ˙psən.] The aspen, Populus tremula;
also used attrib.
(B. & H.); I.W.1 He shakes like a snapsen leaf.
SNARKER, sb. I.W.2 [snā˙kə(r).] A cinder.
The cake’s burnt to a snarker.
SNOBBLE, v.2 I.W.12 [sno˙bl.] To devour greedily;
to gobble; to snap at food. Cf. snabble.
SOOURDER, sb. I.W.1 [sū˙ədə(r).] A game-cock
that wounds its antagonist much.
SPAAN, sb. I.W.1 A scolding, abusive woman.
SPAIKED, ppl. adj. I.W.2 [spēkt.] Speckled, spotted.
Cf. sparked.
SPEER, v.2 I.W.1 [spiə(r).] To aspire.
SPINEDY, adj. I.W.1 [spai˙ndi.] Muscular.
STAST, v. I.W.12 [stæst.] To stop; to give up,
abandon; to flag.
STOCK, adj.1 I.W. [Not known to our correspondents.]
Strong, muscular. (Hall.) Cf. stocky.
SUSS, sb. I.W. [sɐs.] A dog-fish. I.W.1 [Satchell
(1879).]
SWIVELLY, adj. I.W. Giddy. (Hall.) A misprint
for ‘swivetty’ (q.v.).
SWOP, v. I.W. [swop.] To dab up with a cloth;
dial. form of ‘sop.’ (J.D.R.), I.W.1
TARNELLY, adv. I.W.1 [tā˙nəli.] An aphetic dial.
form of ‘eternally.’ ‘She’s tarnelly talkun about et.’
THUCKSTER, sb. I.W. [þɐ˙kstə(r).] A courser.
Wait in close covert the thuckster’s ‘so, ho,’ Moncrieff Dream
(1863) l. 26; I.W.1
TINT, v. I.W. [tint.] To blend. (J.D.R.), I.W.1
TINUALLY, adv. I.W.1 [ti˙niwəli.] An aphetic form
of ‘continually.’
TWICKERED OUT, phr. I.W. Tired, exhausted,
done up.
A must be purely twickered out wiv het and doust and drouth
and all, Gray Ribstone Pippins (1898) 39; I.W.2 My wold dooman
sim prid near twickered out.
TWICKERED OUT, phr. I.W. Tired, exhausted,
done up.
A must be purely twickered out wiv het and doust and drouth
and all, Gray Ribstone Pippins (1898) 39; I.W.2 My wold dooman
sim prid near twickered out.
UNDERGROUND, adj.2 I.W. Undergrown, short,
dumpy.
I.W.1 He’s a miseryeabul little underground chap; I.W.2
VARE, v. I.W.1 [veə(r).] With out: to plough the
first two furrows of the different lands or ridges of a field.
Goo and vare out that ground.
VARMER, sb. I.W. [Not known to our correspondents.]
A large hawk. (Hall.)
VENGEVUL, adj. I.W.1 An aphetic form of ‘revengeful.’
VICE, sb.4 I.W.1 Also in form vize. An aphetic form
of ‘advice.’
VIRE-PAN, sb. I.W.2 A fire-shovel. See Fire-pan,
s.v. Fire, 1 (45).
VIRE-SPANNEL, sb. I.W.2 A dog given to lying
before the fire. See Fire-spannel, s.v. Fire, 1 (59).
VLUCKER, v. I.W.12 [vlɐ˙kə(r).] To flutter; to fly
about.
VOUR, v. I.W.1 An aphetic form of ‘devour.’
WINTLE-END, sb. I.W.1 [wi˙ntl-end.] The end of
a shoemaker’s thread.
WOLD, adj. I.W.2 In comb. Wold England, the
country, as opposed to London. See Old, 1 (33).
Joe Tucker went to Lunnon… When a come back… a zed,
‘Well, it med be all very well vor people that’s used to’t, but
gimme wold England – that’s the place that suits me best.’
WRAPPED, ppl. adj. I.W. In form wropped. [ro˙pt.]
Creased. (J.D.R.), I.W.1
ZEMMIES, int. I.W.1 [ze˙miz.] An exclamation of
surprise or rebuke; also in Comb. Zemmies hauw.
Zemmies hauw! what dost do that vor?
Open access
