DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Steeplejerk]

"sneck lifter"price of a pint in your pocket so you can go into the pub.

[Bodger]

The sneck lifte gave you a chance to tangle for another one or three

[Stanley]

My dad had a saying about that. "One's just right, two's too many and three isn't half enough" In my experience, absolutely accurate!

[Tizer]

I noted seismicity as well. I looked it up and it's a recognised word for describing how prone an area is to earthquakes. Perhaps whoever wrote the press release had done a degree....

I don't usually see `seismicity' but I hear plenty about seismology because of our interest in geology and Mrs Tiz having a nephew who's an exploration geophysicist currently in Singapore. Seismology is concerned with propagation of shock waves through the Earth's crust (and sometimes on other planets too) but this study isn't restricted to earthquakes, it covers any shock wave in the ground. In particular artificial shock waves from controlled explosions are used to study the structure of rocks below the Earth's surface, e.g. to detect salt domes where oil is likely to be found.

[Stanley]

When they did the big oil survey through the Ribble Valley in the late 1960s they didn't use explosives, they vibrated the ground with large pads mounted under heavy trucks.

Can't remember whether I've asked this before. Why a 'clap' of snow? It used to be a common usage in Barlick.

[Wendyf]

When we lived in Scotland it took me a while to get used to clap being used instead of pat or stroke as in "clap the dog".

[Tizer]

When they did the big oil survey through the Ribble Valley in the late 1960s they didn't use explosives, they vibrated the ground with large pads mounted under heavy trucks.

That was just to appease the locals...the guy with the explosives was probably working a few miles down the road!

[Stanley]

Not so Tiz. I asked questions. They said that in the strata they were dealing with the vibrations were just as efficient. The pad supported the whole weight of the large truck and certainly moved the ground! It was a German firm and I think they talked to me only because I had enough German to communicate with them.

[Stanley]

Have we ever looked at 'cob'? Many meanings of course but round here if a thing or person was described as 'cob' it meant funny, odd-ball, different. Is this a Barlick usage or wider spread?

[Tripps]

We have a really good word here -

From the first line of Edwin Waugh's poem "Come Whoam To Thy Childer an' Me" - Aw've just mended th' fire wi' a cob;
( Cob --- A lump of coal ). This reminds me of the childhood song " We come a cob a coaling for bonfire night" I think this originates around Oldham, and the Tinkers have recorded it.

I also use it to describe a crusty bread roll

Then I've heard the phrase "He's got a cob on " meaning he's in a bad mood.

There's a horse called a Welsh Cob, and what was that breakwater at Lyme Regis? - in the French Lieutenants Woman - isn't that called The Cobb? There are also houses in Dorset made of cob.

Finally spiders have them in their webs.

[PanBiker]

I know of all that Tripp's has mentioned, he's right it's a good word. A bit of a cob bugger meaning a bit strange. Out of the same "good word" vein as "stuff".

[Stanley]

Male swan as well..... Had a look in Webster... Corn cob, mixture of clay and straw used as a building material, a Spanish-American coin 16th to 18th centuries, leader of a gang.... More usages than you can poke a stick at, all nouns, but I can't find any reference to it being used as an adjective. Is it exclusively Northern Dialect?

[Cathy]

Does cobber count... 'Good on yer cobber!" ?

[PanBiker]

Where do we get Colly Wobbles from? As in feeling a bit strange.

[Tizer]

The word comes from from cholera and colic, illnesses that make you weak, confused and unsteady.

[Stanley]

Cath, Webster says '1890. Uncertain origin'. I tend to think you may be right, for instance, lots of digging in Oz in the early days, cob could be a shovelful. Think of the other Australian usage, 'Digger'.

[Cathy]

Going back that far Stanley, it's probably an English saying anyway.

[EileenDavid]

My brother's mate was nicknamed Diggy don't know why Eileen

[Stanley]

Cathy, that's probably the case with a lot of Strine language.

[Stanley]

I was thinking about Tom's 'sneck lifter' to pay for a pint in the pub, almost an entrance fee. Percy Shaw who invented the 'cat's eye' road marker in 1933 at Halifax was a teetotaller but he liked going into the pub so he always took a shovelful of coal in for the fire.

[Bodger]

Percy Shaw who invented the 'cat's eye'

Les Dawson, 'if the cat had been walking away he would have invented the pencil sharpener'

[Cathy]

Thanks Bodger

[Stanley]

That's pretty good! He was a funny old bloke but a good man to work for. He once decided he'd like to have a crack at golf so he bought some golf sticks and joined the local club but found nobody would play with him so he enrolled one of his mates, bought him the sticks and they played each other. Unfortunately his mate soon improved and beat Percy every time. Percy gave up golf....

[Bruff]

For some reason when I read 'cob on' above, I thought about the word 'mard'. As in, so-and-so is a real 'mard lump'. My mother used this to refer to a whining child. It's not a Barlick phrase this: the Arctic Monkeys from Sheffield have a song called 'Mardy Bum'. And Nancy Banks-Smith who used to do The Guardian's TV reviews, and was Blackburn born and bred, once noted that a soap character was what her mother would call 'mard'. She then mused if that was how you spelled it as she'd only heard it spoken not written down.

Richard Broughton

[Wendyf]

I dont think I came across mardy till I lived in Chester.