DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Stanley]

Cathy, to be thronged is to be very busy, used to be a common term in Barlick. Kick the bucket is a bit gruesome, generally accepted that it was first used in the 18th century and referred to someone taking their own life by standing on a bucket to get their head in the noose and then kicking the bucket away.
By the way, an interesting slant on how the language changes. Note that I said 'taking their own life' and not what I was brought up with 'committing suicide'. This is obsolete now as suicide is no longer a crime in English law. I'm trying to wean myself off the old term.

[Bodger]

another term for a death "he popped his clogs"

[Cathy]

I thought that was what 'kicked the bucket' meant but some phrases go back so far and change over the years that they end up meaning something else.
Yes these days we wouldn't refer to something so sad in that way.

[Stanley]

Popped his clogs used to be very common round here. 'Handed his chips in'. 'Bought the farm'.
Don't know why but this popped into my head this morning. Round here the old ones always referred to sweets as 'spice'.

[Bodger]

spice = sweets, used in the Sheffield area quite a lot.

[Cathy]

I think it a bit strange when people call sweets (as in lollies) sweeties. It just doesn't sound right to me.
Also when adults call their parents Mummy and Daddy. Their adults themselves with children of their own, very strange.

[Tripps]

Just a personal observation - I've noticed that ' sweeties' is used a lot by Scottish people, and adults saying ''mummy and daddy' is common in N. Ireland. I agree that both sound a bit odd from a grown up.

[Bodger]

as a lad i'd annoy my parent by using a posh Yorkshire accent," mater can i ave a jam shauve" , a shauve, not sure of the spelling was a sandwich or a slice of bread

[Tizer]

In the 1700s, in the days of Matthew Boulton and James Watt, Birmingham was known for its toy manufacturing. But it didn't mean children's toys as we know them now, the word toys was used to mean all kinds of mechanical gadgets and equipment and objects. Boulton's father was a toy manufacturer, making belt buckles, and Boulton carried on the business and expanded it to everything from buttons to steam engines for the SS Great Britain. Not bad for a `toy' maker! (Incidentally, James Watt was described as `useless' by his schoolteacher and his father despaired of him but once Watt got out of school and started doing practical work in his dad's business he thrived and invented a new type of buckle while still in his teens. Dad sent him to London for a couple of years to work with an instrument maker and that put young James on the right road. Mind you, he worked all the time, no playing - partly because he had no money, being given only bed and board, and partly because London was full of Navy press gangs at the time and he didn't dare go outside!)

[Stanley]

Bodge, 'shauve' interests me. The trade name for a thin sheet of leather, such as you would use for covering a desk top, is 'shive' or 'skive'. an old word meaning to split. Closely related to shaving as well, as in wood planing. You can see how it also got to be used for a very close thin cut to get whiskers off. Lots of similar spellings in Old European languages and some like Old German are also closely related to scrape. Shive was also a slang name for a knife, shortened now to 'shiv' and still used.

[Bruff]

Tripps - I have noticed that too, especially the use of mummy and daddy in Northern Ireland. There's a sinister scene in the film 'Cal', where an IRA man talks about the exploits of his now stroke-ridden father, referrring to him as 'daddy'.

Terms for grandparents vary. Here on Merseyside, a grandma is your 'nan', whereas my 'nan' was a great-grandparent. 'Nanan' is widely used for a grandma in Sheffield. I knew a chap from St Helens and the family referred to the paternal grandmother as 'mother'.

Richard Broughton

[Tizer]

Often the terms were used to show respect for the older members of the community. In this village there was lady known to all as `Old Ma Peppard'. She lived in a windy spot and did the washing for anyone in the village who needed it done. Obviously she needed a lot of hot water and she would walk miles collecting logs and bits of timber in a small cart to feed the boiler.

[Stanley]

Funny how terms vary. I always used mammy and daddy Don't know why, must have been what they taught me.
"The street was chock a block". Where did that come from?

[PanBiker]

Is chock a block something to do with typesetting?

[chinatyke]

Is chock something to do with chocking cart wheels when the street was really busy?

[PanBiker]

I think China's is better than mine.

[Cathy]

Phrases org uk has quite a few definitions.
If I use the phrase chock a block its to say that I can't fit another thing into a box for example or that the shops were really busy.

I like 'full as a gug'.

[PanBiker]

Abbreviated to just chocker as well. Also heard chock full.

[Wendyf]

I found that it was originally a nautical term describing the point when a block and tackle used to raise sails was at it's full extent so that the two wooden blocks were tight together and couldn't move any more. Better explanation than mine HERE

[chinatyke]

That sounds more like it.

I once tried to board a Nelson bus and the Indian conductor said "you can't get on here, I'm chock-a-block."
I replied "I don't care what your name is, I'm getting on."

Sorry about that...

Edit: Oops, just remembered, it wasn't chock-a-block it was Ram-Jam-Full...

[Stanley]

Now Wendy has said it I realise that I have heard that explanation before....

[Bruff]

Very interesting article on collective nouns here, and their origin

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/s ... tive-nouns

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

I see they don't mention 'a clench' of cyclists.....

[Stanley]

Do you remember the days when the normal usage in this country was 'inflammable' for something that burned easily? It was the opposite of course and I can't understand how we ever came to make that national mistake!

[Tripps]

I came across a similar example recently. It seems that inhabitable in some legal documents means the opposite of habitable. Similar to edible / inedible, credible / incredible.

We would now say uninhabitable, which is actually tautological. (I think).