DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Cathy]

So much for Aussie lingo...
From my crossword book - The Australian phrase 'fair dinkum' actually comes from the Lincolnshire dialect. Dinkum meant 'a day's allocation of work ', so 'a fair dinkum' was a reasonable amount of work to be done.
A billy, the enamel cooking pot used outdoors, especially for making tea, comes from the Scottish dialect word billy meaning 'cooking utensil '.
Grog, which meant 'alcoholic drink diluted with water ' is a reference to Old Grog, nickname of Edward Vernon (1684-1757), a British admiral who wore a grogram cloak and who ordered his sailors ' rum to be diluted. Grog came to mean strong drink of any kind.

[Stanley]

I knew about 'grog' Cathy but fair dinkum and billy were news to me. Not surprising really when you think that 'Strine' was invented by immigrants.... (I once read a book, 'How to Speak Strine' which of course is short usage for 'Australian'.)
I used the phrase recently 'Too right' and it was picked up straight away as an Aussie expression. I use it frequently and of course picked it up from my dad.

[Tizer]

This morning Will Self referred to the `gimcrack' cladding on the tower blocks. Now where did gimcrack originate from?

[Tripps]

This is what it means to me Gimcrack Stakes

I love the way Stanley used the word 'iatrogenic' without explanation today. I almost used it recently but thought it a bit show offy.

Changed my mind now - if you've got it flaunt it'

[Stanley]

I always credit my readers with more intelligence than me David. I do it in my BET articles and nobody has ever complained. Illich told me that it meant 'doctor induced' disease and at that time he reckoned it was at about 60% of all ailments. I never hear anyone mention Illich today but he's well worth looking at!

[Stanley]

I was admiring the way Jack responds to commands this morning and the word 'biddable' came to mind. I think this is pretty universal but I also remembered the old Barlick version, an obedient dog was described as 'good to say'. I haven't heard that for many years.

[Tripps]

Word meanings.

Trick - my dictionary defines it as -
A cunning act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone.


Unless of course if you are a scientist with at least a PhD and 10 - 15 years research experience then it means - A neat, perfectly logical, and robust, short cut.

[Bruff]

What’s a ‘trick of the trade’ then?

Richard Broughton

[Tizer]

An example of what a research scientist would call a `trick':
When glass capillary columns were first introduced for gas chromatography (GC) they were generally 50m long capillary tubes coiled into a circle of about 15 cm to fit in the GC oven. They were expensive, fragile and easily broken and many were being thrown in the bin. In the lab I worked in we showed that, for our type of analysis, you could split the column into two 25m coils and still get good enough results. That meant you could twice as much of the work for the same outlay on GC columns. That was our `trick'. It may have been cunning but it certainly wasn't meant to deceive or outwit anyone!

Our ability to detect and measure CFCs at low levels in the atmosphere was the result of a trick thought up by Prof James Lovelock. The trick was to use a radioactive electron emitter instead of the methods in use at the time. His new method was up to1000 more sensitive. It's the same for climate scientists but these days the `tricks' are often mathematical rather than technical.

[Stanley]

Like many of our words the exact meaning relies on the context. That can make the difference between Tripps' two examples. The word 'knack' came to mind, is one of them often the same as trick?

[Tripps]

Yes indeed - tricky things these words aren't they?

Regarding the UEA research use of the word trick - I think I'd still go with the first definition rather than the second. It was also colloquially known as 'the fiddle factor'.

[Tizer]

I'll bet when the ancient Egyptian mathematicians first found out how to use 22 over 7 to calculate circumference they called it the `fiddle factor' before it got called pi.

[Stanley]

[chad16]

It was, and still is, 'wads' for me; love 'em.

My Dad (a Barlicker) ...used to have a saying :- "When I were a lad, as big as me Dad... I lived in a pea swad !, .. don't know if thats any help

[Stanley]

That one threw me! Is it Chad posting for the first time after he joined in August 2014 or has the site had a brain fart?
I know I am a pedant in some matters but the usage I heard from an educated person reporting on the Bristol racial harassment case said "Those small numbers of officers". Wrong Dearie! It should either be 'that small number' or 'those officers'. I know it's only a small thing but if we aren't vigilant the language will deteriorate!

[Thomo]

If anyone finds the misuse of the English language to be irritating, then I would recommend steering well clear of the other local site "Barlick Talk" on FB. Not all who use it are guilty of course, but there is a high level of a poor if non existent understanding of Spelling, Grammar and general basic punctuation. In this area, there is also a fairly high level of extremely foul language.

[Stanley]

There used to be a terrible Barlick website that was full of schoolchildren slagging each other off. That was the spur to Doc creating Oneguy......
I was surprised to find when I went to Lancaster to find that grammar ceased to be taught in English Schools in the late 1950s......
I got tangled up with a dog on one of those extending leads and I apologised to the owner that I wasn't as lish as I used to be, 'Lish' as in lissome or flexible. I can't remember when I last used that old word.....

[Bruff]

As someone who regularly splits infinitives I tend to stay out of grammar debates. And I have a tendency to start sentences with words that some say I shouldn’t. That said, some constructions you see are toe-curling.

I was reading a book review a few months now on a flight from Florence to Munich (just to emphasise my liberal, internationalist credentials ), on something to do with the English language. The point being made in the book was that now, the English people as speakers of English are vastly outnumbered by those in other countries where English is the official language. Not just the US, where English is spoken but there are some differences, but many African countries who have chosen English as their language of government, business and so on. In the absence of a defender of the language like the French Academy, the argument was that English, the language, will in time morph into something the English (the people) do not recognise as the English of all these peoples is really different. Attention was drawn to South Africa and its Parliament where the English spoken is a fast developing English/Afrikaans/Xhosa hybrid. The Queen’s English is becoming a rather niche English, with English in time perhaps being something very different. Fascinating stuff. Can’t recall the book but the review was in the FT, Harvard University Press I think and what I do remember is that it was about a 100 quid!

Richard Broughton

[Wendyf]

I was surprised to find when I went to Lancaster to find that grammar ceased to be taught in English Schools in the late 1950s......

I'm not sure about that Stanley, when I took my O levels in 1966 English was still split into two exams, language and literature. From what I remember the language exam was mostly about grammar.

[PanBiker]

Having invigilated a few now I can confirm that all English exams carry marks for the correct use of grammar, spelling and punctuation. They are still compulsory for all students and split into Language and Literature, we need a lot of spare pens when we have the full year taking English. Quite a few will complete the supplied paper on the answer sheet, usually about 16 pages and many ask for a supplementary answer book. It's still a biggie.

[Stanley]

I suppose it depends on how you define grammar. I think what I was referring to was it being taught as a separate subject. Even at Lancaster it was subsumed with linguistics. I never liked it and still don't understand 'parsing' a sentence. The funny thing is that I'm told I do it all the time. I got a very good mark in my first year exams and couldn't understand how that could be..... They wanted me to make English Lit and Lang my major but I told them it was too boring......

[Stanley]

Ian used a word new to me this morning. 'Caffled' in the sense of hitting a wall of exhaustion.

[Tizer]

I don't often hear or see the word yonder now. A useful word for referring to something distant.

I've been reading one of Richard Fortey's books, very well-written, a joy to read and full of interesting facts, words and phrases. For example, I've learnt that Henry II was a keen town planner and founded Henley-on-Thames. It became the highest point on the Thames from which goods could easily be shipped by the river to London; there too many obstacles upstream. So the woods around Henley became a valuable source of timber for fuel and building in the rapidly expanding city. Two sizes of log were sent by river: billets and bavins. The former were 3 foot 4 inches in length and about 10 inches in circumference, the latter 3 foot in length and 24 inches in circumference. Henley also became a good place for brewers: clean water from the chalk, timber for the casks, local barley and a direct route to London.

[Stanley]

Bavin is new to me and it escaped Ron Zupko as well when he wrote 'A Dictionary of Medieval Weights and Measures'. He has exactly the same measure for 'billet' as you and it applies to cast billets of metal as well. Ron's book is wonderful, can you remember my search for the elusive 'agondhal', a measure of malted Barley by volume? Everyone should have it on their bookshelf!

[PanBiker]

This image could go in any number of topics, History, Forgotten Corners, The Flatley Dryer, Politics and a few more but I have decided to put it here.

It has been reproduced by a friend of mine from an original ILP poster.