DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Stanley]

Nice one Tiz...... Mining had so many unique terms...... Always liked 'buddle' in lead mining....

[Tizer]

Yes, buddle is used throughout mining in Cornwall. I like their phrase `gruffy ground' for the landscape where the early workers (known as `the old men') dug lots of pits on the surface. Bal maidens for the women working on the surface.

[Stanley]

[Tripps]

Have you heard the phrase 'she's got all her chairs at home' ?

I've taken it to mean she is a sensible woman. I find -to my great surprise - that google doesn't seem to have heard of it. I think that's a first.

[Stanley]

I use it frequently David. Whether that means it's in common use is another matter!

[Tizer]

I heard someone on the radio refer to Boris Johnson's wild claims as `guff'. It sounds right!

[Stanley]

I like words like that which rely on onomatopoeia for their affect. I think my favourite 'Lurk' is another, think bang! 'Cuckoo' or 'slimy'. I know the etymologists can find obscure derivations for many of them but their descriptive power is what makes them survive.

[plaques]

Something rarely heard today. Toadying up.
Noun
In 17th-century Europe, a toadeater was a showman's assistant whose job was to make the boss look good. The toadeater would eat (or pretend to eat) what were supposed to be poisonous toads. His or her charlatan master would then "save" the toad-afflicted assistant by expelling the poison. It's little wonder that such assistants became symbolic of extreme subservience, and that toadeater became a word for any obsequious underling. By the early 1800s, it had been shortened and altered to toady, our current term for a servile self-seeker.

[Stanley]

I didn't know that! Thanks P.

[Tripps]

Is it Miners' Gaila or Miners' Garla?

Don't know - but I bet not many in Durham say garla.

Actually Jez Lowe calls it 'The Big Meeting'

PS: I typed Gayla at first but soon realised that might complicate matters.

[PanBiker]

Gala, no r in it so your phonetic version as above.

[Stanley]

I think I have always used 'gayla' version. No Idea why, probably what I was imprinted with as a lad.....

[Tizer]

In Cornwall recently I collected a couple of pebbles of magnetite (black iron oxide, Fe3O4) from a beach near the old mines and did the usual thing of putting a compass near it and sensing its attraction for iron. I could detect a slight attraction. It had me thinking how people are given the wrong idea about magnetite. We're told that it's magnetic and are shown photos of specimens covered in iron filings or with pins standing up on them. The truth is that many examples of magnetite found `in the wild' have little or no magnetic attraction for iron - but they have the capacity to be made magnetic just as we can make a piece of iron magnetic. However some specimens are found that already have good magnetic attraction and these are the `lodestones' used by our ancestors. It's thought that these are magnetite that has been made magnetic by a lightning strike - remember that some of these rocks have been lying around on the ground for a very long time!

I looked up the origin of the word lode and it comes from the old English word `lad' which means course or direction. This explains lodestar and a mineral lode in a mine. And all that thinking came from picking up an unattractive pebble on a beach!

[Whyperion]

I have an idea this might be a repeat.... During my foray into the Hanseatic League yesterday I was reminded of the origin of our use of 'sterling' as in 'Pound Sterling'.
I found this:- Middle English: probably from steorra ‘star’ + -ling (because some early Norman pennies bore a small star). Until recently one popular theory was that the coin was originally made by Easterling moneyers (from the ‘eastern’ Hanse towns), but the stressed first syllable would not have been dropped.
I will bow to the etymologists, it isn't my field, but I do like the simple 'Easterling' theory and will continue to favour it!

Sterling Silver?
or as an upright and dependable person a Sterling Man, or he did Sterling Duty. Implies some kind of standard but presumably derived from the above.

[Stanley]

P and I had a good 'cal' yesterday. Is 'cal' for a natter, conversation or chat common or a Barlick expression?

[PanBiker]

In common usage here.

[Tripps]

Never heard of it. . .

I've heard of camp or camping from the Preston lot, in a similar context though.

[Sue]

I think I have always used 'gayla' version. No Idea why, probably what I was imprinted with as a lad.....

Having been brought up in the NE and spent many a happy day in Durham as a teenager and even helped on first aid posts at said event, it was always pronounced ´gayla’

[Sue]

Gala, no r in it so your phonetic version as above.

since when did phonetics determine how a word is pronounced. HOW NOW BROWN COW, becomes HOO NOO BROON COO in the NE etc

[plaques]

HOW NOW BROWN COW, becomes HOO NOO BROON COO in the NE

That's exactly what me marra would say has he made his way to the netty.

[Stanley]

Est bin mon bin? No, bin mon has non bin and t'bin's still in't ginnel. Pass me me ganzy.....
Also, there was a famous Bairnsfather cartoon showing two soldiers picking lice off the seams in their clothes, caption read "Chatting by the wayside". Chat being Lancashire dialect for louse.

[Sue]

HOW NOW BROWN COW, becomes HOO NOO BROON COO in the NE

That's exactly what me marra would say has he made his way to the netty.

That made me chuckle. I had a new head teacher when I was 13, he was from down souf! At the first speech day he announced he had been learning the local language. The one used here was some what similar to one he used, plus hoy them clarts at that spuggy. That head master went down a treat.

[Stanley]

[Cathy]

Origin of "Cor blimey".
Explanation of surprise, a euphemism (specifically a minced oath) derived from 'God blind me'.
1st recorded in print in Barrere and Leland's A dictionary of Slang, jargon and cant, 1889.
The extended version was used by Arthur Morrison in A Child of Jago, 1896: "Gawblimy, not what?".
The link between 'gor blimey', or 'cor blimey' and 'god blind me' was made evident by James Joyce in Ulysses, 1922: God blimey if she aint clinker.
Being as it is a contraction of 'God blind me', the term was originally spelled 'gorblimey' and is still frequently used that way.

[Stanley]

Very accurate Cathy. Many other examples, bloody = By our Lady, bugger is a corruption of Bulgar, Hocus Pocus is a corruption of the Latin Eucharist, 'hoc est enim corpus meum' but some dispute this.