DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Stanley]

Thanks for that David. I had forgotten that I posted in Shed Matters on July 3 last year that Walter was dead.... (Old age....) A good man and sensible. If he said 'brossen' wasn't German origin to his knowledge I would believe him. I think we suggested a connection with brose at one time.
Webster says 15th century Middle English 'broys' perhaps from Old French 'broez'. It also refers to 'Brewis. a noun used in Newfoundland for hard bread boiled in water or milk, same suggested roots as for 'brose' but in addition a suggestion that it may be connected to Old High German 'brod' (broth).
Brossen doesn't get a mention in Webster or Collins... Complicated stuff words......

[Stanley]

Charlotte Hill has been interviewing Chuck on his Transylvanian stamping grounds... One element of the interview is a report on what Charlotte repeatedly refers to as a 'scything' competition. Call me an old pedant but I would rather hear her saying 'a competition for mowing using scythes'. More accurate...'scything' could be an adjective describing a characteristic of the competition itself and not the activity. All right I'm picky.....

[Cathy]

Could this be where the word 'loo' for toilet comes from?
Gardyloo - the cry made by servants before emptying buckets of dirty water from high windows into the street.
It comes from the French gardez-l'eau 'watch out for the water'.

[Bruff]

I used this word last night: ‘kaffled’. As in: ‘So-and-so kaffled out’. It means they cried off, pulled out through fear etc. (you’d ‘kaffle out’ at the top of a diving board, or from going over a rope bridge’). Often used in our family growing up in Barlick that. My wife had to ask ‘what?’ But it’s another she’s learned. Like ‘cramned’, which she now uses when someone’s in a bad mood: ‘He was right cramned!’ Or a 'kaisty beggar' who's fussy with their food

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

That's my understanding Cathy.
Richard, I've never heard 'kaffled' but keisty and crammed are very familiar.

[plaques]

‘kaffled’. As in: ‘So-and-so kaffled out’. It means they cried off,

Very common round the Burnley area.

[Tripps]

Well for what it's worth - I've never heard of kaffled, cramned, or kaisty at all.

I thought for a moment we were being wound up as in Keith Waterhouse's play 'Billy Liar' in which Billy Fisher teases the aged Councillor Duxbury, with the made up word 'thraiped'. Surely not

I've looked all three, and can only find kaffle - but with a quite different meaning -
"To fall asleep suddenly. Can be drunk, stoned or just plain tired. Can be a 'kaffler' which is where you are a person who 'kaffles' a lot."

Cramned and Kaisty seem to have defeated Mr Google.

[PanBiker]

All three in common usage in our family.

[Wendyf]

I'm with you Tripps, never heard any of them!

[Tripps]

I must say - I'm reet thraiped with it all. . .

Actually I think thraiped means oyned, or if it doesn't - it should do.

[Stanley]

It's an indication of how improved my sight is that I have started finding coins in the street again. When my father had good luck like that he always said "Corn in Egypt" and I find myself doing the same....

[Tripps]

Jez Lowe puts it nicely here

The streets are lined with silver in the high part of the town.

[Stanley]

The postmen and women have the best score as they are always about around the streets early in the morning.

[Cathy]

My new word for today (and my goodness what a word it is) is 'degustation'. Feel like putting a few exclamation marks after it !!
So what does it mean? It's a culinary term meaning a careful, appreciative tasting of various foods and focusing on the gustatory system, the senses, high culinary art and good company. Phew. Bon Appétit.

[Thomo]

There are several words that will at some time appear in dictionaries with added information attached, some of which I confess are mildly irritating. One of these is "like" as in "I was like wow" or "like, and if visual making a strange face", sometimes repeated many times in a sentence. Another is "well" as in "well big", "well pissed of" and "well hard". Sic: "I was like well pissed off". And of course there is another one which at the risk of breaching human rights legislation and all of what goes with it applies to a term that originally meant "happy" as in "we had a gay old time last night!!".

[Bodger]

One from my father c. 1940/50, kerfuffle, a bit of a to do !

[Stanley]

It must be fairly common Bodge, most spell checks recognise it. Funny thing is it isn't in Webster....

[Tripps]

My Cassell slang book says of US origin, late 19th Century. Means a fuss or a row. Derives from the Scots curfuffle which has the same meaning.

[Bruff]

Travelling through the vineyards of France you will often see the word ‘Degustation’ on signs by the side of the road. This means you can pull into the vineyard and try, taste and buy the wines straight from the producer.

We are off to the Jura in France the week after next (part of a Euro road trip), with the intention of pulling into a few ‘dugustations’ and trying the local and distinctive ‘Vin Jaune’. Raymond Blanc (from the Jura) made great play of these wines on one of his series filmed in France a few years back.

Richard Broughton

PS – I was always under the impression that ‘gay’ is an acronym. ‘Good As You’, from Stonewall and the various Rights movements of many years back. It’s relationship to ‘gay’ meaning’ happy’ is non-existent, just as there’s no relationship between ‘file’ (the tool) and ‘file’ (where you might choose to put your papers).

[Stanley]

That has always been my understanding of 'gay' as well Richard. First came to my attention in San Francisco in the 1980s... I was horrified to find also that wearing white or cream jeans was a gay signal! There was also some significance to a red kerchief hanging out of your back pocket.... Travel broadens the mind.

[Cathy]

I think in some ways the lines are becoming blurred when trying to work out if someone is Gay. I have been watching a certain tv show for a while now (not a sit-com) and one of the guys on there who I was quite sure was Gay, has just announced his new girlfriend, another on the show who I am sure is straight, he is married and has small children, often wears bright yellow or pink trousers and what I would call slightly feminine tops and lots of jewellery. Sometimes its just too hard to really know.

[Tizer]

I think you'll find that the word gay was used to mean homosexual a lot farther back than Stonewall and the Stonewall Riots, being used to mean homosexual men by the 1920s. Also used at various times before that to mean people of loose morals, prostitutes etc.

[Stanley]

Tiz.... I think that while that may be true 'gay' as an indicator of sexual preference became much more common in the 70s. I can still hear Joyce Grenfell asserting that they were having a 'gay time' in one of her post war songs. These things were very important then and she would never have got away with it if there had been the slightest innuendo. I suspect that we are all a balance of male and female traits, it's just that some lean further one way or the other. The totally 'male' men are probably the dangerous ones we all avoid!

[Tizer]

I agree with you that "'gay' as an indicator of sexual preference became much more common in the 70s" but that's because homosexuality became a topic of open discussion. The word was in use to mean homosexual long before Stonewall.

[Tripps]

On the idea that gay is an acronym - I didn't really buy that, and it seems wiki agrees

"It has nevertheless been claimed that gay stands for "Good As You", but there is no evidence for this: it is a folk etymology backronym."