DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Cathy]

I like"Least said, soonest mended".

[Stanley]

That's another very true saying Cathy. Add 'Lend money and lose a friend'....
I used the word 'faff' in a response to Wendy this morning. Where did 'faffing about' originate. As far as I can see it's almost universal. It says something when the spell-checker accepts the word without querying it.

[Stanley]

If my dad was describing someone with good eyesight he used to say "He's got an eye like a stinking eel". I think that's because a half rotten eel's eyes stand out clear and bright.

[chinatyke]

Funny how often dialect words pop up without you realising they are special. This morning I used "newfangled" and I saw one of Stanley's post with waste not, want not, a saying I heard frequently when I was a kid. Fangled apparently is derived from Old English fangol - inclined to take [Concise Oxford Dictionary].

I knew your other saying as "lend a friend, lose a friend"

[plaques]

It'll spoil nothing.
Used yesterday at the sports centre when I realized I had forgotten my comb. I asked a pal if I could borrow his, he had a bold head. He passed me his towel!.

[Stanley]

Heard this morning on World Service... "The Mexican police have discovered 60 mass graves". Now I realise I am a pedant but shouldn't this have been '60 bodies in a mass grave'?

[Tizer]

Don't be too sure...an awful lot of people get killed by the Mexican gangsters these days. Maybe there really are `60 mass graves'.

[Stanley]

Possible but more likely to be another example of falling standards at the Beeb. Another thing I have noted is the lamentable incidence of broken connections when speaking during interviews over the phone or radio. I wonder if they are still struggling with the bum system they bought. Was it Siemens?

[Stanley]

They say that the Inuit have many words for snow. We are the same with rain. Two obscure ones came to me this morning. In Ireland they use the word 'drimmy' for a light misty rain and on the East coast they have 'harr' when the mizzle comes in from the sea. I wonder how many words we can come up with?

[Cathy]

OK I'll have a go... drizzle, mizzle, showers, sprinkling, teeming, pouring, darting

[Wendyf]

Stair rods, cats & dogs,Scotch mist.

[PanBiker]

Chucking it down, wellying down, cloudburst, drenched (more to be wet than rain itself), damping.

[Tripps]

We often use 'persisting down'.

[Stanley]

'Siling' with rain? (Ever watched milk running through a sile? A sieve lined with a filter pad.)

[Bodger]

Stanley,, hearing of your sight improvement, thats nearly an oxymoron !! and you subsequent cleaning purge reminds me of a word used by my mother in the Holmfirth area when she was cleaning = fettling, i e , the house needs a good fettle

[Stanley]

Still common usage in foundries Bodge, 'fettling' is the process of rough grinding new castings to clean off flash and rough edges.

[plaques]

How's your fettle. Link.

[Stanley]

I asked about my mother's saying when there was a light shower early in the day, "It's pride of the morning". I heard an Irish farmer use the same phrase during the programmes about the Met Office yesterday so she must have heard it from someone else....

[Stanley]

Have you ever noticed the way we use words for meat that avoid naming the beast we are eating? Think of beef, ham, bacon, veal and contrast with what we call food from the sea, Cod, Haddock, Herring etc. Are we vaguely ashamed of eating our fellow mammals?

[Cathy]

Reading a novel set in Ireland at the moment, the word used for not attending school, without leave or explanation was 'mitched'. We used to say we were playing truant. What did you say?

[Marilyn]

"Wagging it"
(And I did...occasionally. Not to get up to mischief, but to go ice-skating)

[Stanley]

I was a good lad.... never played truant once!

[Stanley]

I heard a radio presenter say that flaws in the Turkish government have been 'fromented' by the opposition. Now I wonder what he meant....?

[Tizer]

A Turkish hybrid between foment and ferment, although it sounds more like a competitor for Bemax wheat germ!

[Tripps]

I seem to remember we did the word 'brossen' meaning full up, on the old site. I suggested it might be of German origin, but Gugger (RIP), said no.

Now I've stumbled across this - Brossen Steakhouse in Keswick.

I think the picture of that burger says the proverbial thousand words.