DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Whyperion]

Watching Canterbury Cathedral on BBC2 this morning

Slype

slype is a variant of slip in the sense of a narrow passage; in architecture, the name for the covered passage usually found in monasteries or cathedrals between the transept and the chapter house.


I think Slip for ginnel and alleyway I have heard of, possibly when I was in Otley

[Tizer]

Reading a book about rock formations in Namibia where wind-driven sand has eroded them into curious shapes I was puzzled by what I took to be a mis-spelling repeated several times. It kept referring to corrasion of the rock, instead of corrosion. I looked up corrasion in Collins and found no entry, and my spellchecker in this post is also flagging it as wrong. Eventually I found it in a geology dictionary. Corrasion is distinct from corrosion which applies only to chemical attack on a material. Corrasion is also destructive but due to physical attack. In geology it covers both abrasion (by friction, rubbing, e.g. by water and wind) and attrition (by physical impact such as pebbles on the beach or rocks in a stream).

[Stanley]

Nice Tiz. Another useful word for me and David.



Brimham Rocks near Pately Bridge.

[plaques]

Keir Starmer accusing Boris of 'winging' it.

Wing it: Improvise, as in The interviewer had not read the author's book; he was just winging it. This expression comes from the theater, where it alludes to an actor studying his part in the wings (the areas to either side of the stage) because he has been suddenly called on to replace another

[Tizer]

This giant boulder in the Namibian desert hasn't rolled into this position or been dropped by an ancient glacier. It's what was left after the wind, sandstorms and freeze-thaw have eroded the original rocks differentially.

[Cathy]

Isn’t Mother Nature wonderful.
You’d have to be dead unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time...

[Stanley]

I always have the same thought about balancing stones Cathy!
In old fashioned byres, shippons and mistals solid waste was shovelled out into the midden and in the best set ups the liquids drained into an underground tank where it was stored and later tanked out onto grass with a horse drwan wooden box cart. The tank was always called the 'saur' tank round here. I always thought that was a dialect version of sour but wonder whether it's even older and related to the German 'sauer'?

[Stanley]

'Rive'. To tear or split, such a useful word. I looked it up.
"From Middle English riven (“to rive”), of North Germanic origin, from Old Norse rífa (“to rend, tear apart”), from Proto-Germanic *rīfaną (“to tear, scratch”), from Proto-Indo-European *(e)reip- (“to crumble, tear”). Cognate with Danish rive (“to tear”), Old Frisian rīva (“to tear”), Old English ārǣfan (“to let loose, unwrap”), Old Norse ript (“breach of contract, rift”), Norwegian Bokmål rive (“to tear”) and Albanian rrip (“belt, rope”)."

[Julie in Norfolk]

Ancestors of mine were slate rivers in the lake district, splitting slate into thinner sheet / tiles etc. You try looking that up in the internet and you get lovely pictures of some place called Slate River. Ah well....

[Stanley]

Julie, Good morning! A very good example of 'Riven', in fact perfect.

[Stanley]

In a spare moment I dipped into my new Bolton Priory book and tripped over something that grabbed me. I have always liked working out the origins of family names and many of them were connected with occupations. Here are a few that spring to mind.
Geldard = keeper of the gelded cattle, Bullocks. 'Geldherd'.
Coward = Cowherd
Goddard = Goatherd
Nutter = Neatherd. (Keepers of deer in Royal Forests)

[Tizer]

`Surnames: Word of Mouth' Radio 4 LINK
`What's in a name? Chris Ledgard looks at where our surnames come from and what they mean to us. He meets two people with very unusual stories, then visits the team of researchers at UWE who are tracing the origins of family names in the UK - many for the first time. And Gregory Clark is using surnames to track the wealth and status of families over forty generations, with surprising results.'

[Stanley]

The origin and advent of the use of surnames (and place and field names) is a very interesting historical field. I have always had a peripheral fascination with them. My forename Stanley is actually more common as a surname and derives from Stoneleigh in Warwickshire and that in turn derives from 'stony place'.....

[Bodger]

Just reading a comment about a photo from a relation who lives in the Penistone area, That was February and as a mother I was whittled sick knowing how bad it would be going up Snowden

[Stanley]

Never come across that usage Bodge, must be local I think.

[Tripps]

'having me on'

Now used as a greeting by callers to talk show radio hosts - 'thanks for having me on'

It once meant not telling me the truth - now superseded by 'you're joking' or 'you're kidding me'

I'd get out more if I could.

[Stanley]

Don't bother David, stay in and keep making intelligent posts!

[Cathy]

I also have noticed a lot of ‘thanks for having me on’ being said on our tv chat shows. Mostly the people and the subject wouldn’t in normal times be on the show, but because of late we have had less news to report the show needs fillers to keep the show going. Quite a few of the subjects are about things to do while most of us are stuck at home.

[PanBiker]

For show fillers, we play a game at home of spot the recognisable "celebrity"! Lots of the "Celebrity" versions of shows have folk on that I haven't a clue who they are, probably had a bit part in a soap or a day in the jungle, another favourite are the old Big Brother dummies. What's wrong with having normal folk, they are usually a hell of lot more interesting.

[Tripps]

My favourite nonentity celebrity is Gemma Collins. Her ingenuity at getting herself into the Daily Mail news list is wonderful. She links herself to whatever is in the news, and regularly loses several stones in weight in just a couple of weeks. An example to us all. Tragic about her beloved cat - a ventilated victim of corona virus - we can all relate to that - and it was only 25 years old, no age at all.

PS - further intensive research cat age chartreveals that in human years, the cat was the equivalent of 116 years old. It's a cruel world.

[PanBiker]

I bet Gemma doesn't make it to 116.

[Tizer]

She probably won't get a pension until she's 99!

[Stanley]

I tripped over the name Wayte in the Bolton Priory book. Realised it was the same as Waite my old mate Ted.
Look it up, interesting, wayte and its variants were originally watchmen, then become community singers 'waits'.

[Stanley]

Another name from the past. 'Lambhyird', this was the senior shepherd on a monastic estate. Origin of Lambert surname perhaps?

[Bodger]

A word that caused amusement here in Ireland we were talking about lighting fires, i said i always started by "riddling" it ?