DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Whyperion]

Bolton le Moors. (Were they responsible for the place name as well?)

I suspect older than that the 'le' in place and family names is probably Norman French.

[Tizer]

I find myself constantly thinking about such expressions as I use them, and often wonder how it would sound to one of that group. It's an interesting exercise.

We've had a lot of contact with people from overseas. Once we had a Spanish scientist staying with us and while walking through a new housing estate I explained how developers now avoid uniformity and that's why the place looked so higgledy-piggledy. The word came out automatically before I thought about him not understanding it. His English was good but he still had to ask `What is theese eegledy-peegledy?'

[Stanley]

I had exactly the same experience with one of the professors from Carleton College who was Japanese. I learned a lot of interesting things from him, the milk allergy was one but another was the fact that the Japanese could never understand why we blew our noses on a piece of cloth and then kept it in our pocket! It is peculiar when you think about it.

[Stanley]

'Fleak' or 'flake' as a description for the ceiling-mounted rack in many kitchens used for drying clothes and oat cakes. The same word was used for the sloping wooden racks attached to the front and back of carts used in hay time to increase their capacity. This meaning seems to have been overlooked by the online dictionaries.

[Tripps]

This is a new one on me. . .

bloviate -verb

"to speak a lot in an annoying way as if you are very important"

Not something any of us can be accused of.

MP's though . . . .

[Stanley]

New to me also...

[Wendyf]

This morning I was definitely floundering in the wet mud down the field. Was I doing what the fish does or was the fish named after the action?

[Stanley]

I found these Wendy....
“Flounder” as a verb is an odd bird. (The noun “flounder,” a kind of flat fish, is etymologically unrelated to the verb “to flounder”). The verb “to flounder” is almost certainly an alteration of “to founder,” influenced by other verbs, such as “blunder,” depicting clumsy or frantic motion. When “flounder” first appeared in the 16th century, it meant “to stumble,” and later “to struggle clumsily.” A bit later on, it came to mean “to struggle along with great difficulty.”
From The Word Detective. (LINK)

Flounder (noun) "flatfish," c. 1300, from Anglo-French floundre, Old North French flondre, from Old Norse flydhra, from Proto-Germanic *flunthrjo (source also of Middle Low German vlundere, Danish flynder, Old Swedish flundra "flatfish"),

[Wendyf]

Interesting, thank you Stanley!

[Stanley]

Interesting for me as well Wendy and news also. I didn't realise the noun and verb had different roots. Complicated little buggers these words!

[Wendyf]

I was doing it again this morning!
Founder isn't a word that's used often these days, you occasionally hear of a plan or a marriage foundering but "on the rocks" is more common leaving out foundered.
The old term for laminitis in horses was founder, now just used at the end point of that disease when the bones of the foot are no longer suspended in the hoof and the horse can't move.

[Stanley]

I've heard the word 'founder' being used to describe a horse that has simply collapsed for whatever reason but most often if ridden into the ground.

[Tripps]

Is this one of those words that has two (almost) opposite meanings? It means to sink and be destroyed, or it's someone who creates and starts a venture. Yates Wine Lodge used to sell 'Founder's Port' at a reasonable price, one day a year, to celebrate the gentleman's birthday.


I wish I hadn't heard about its connection with horses. I've learned quite enough words to do with the problems of equines over the last few years to last me. I don't need any more.

[Tizer]

For what it's worth my interpretation is that the strangely differing meanings ascribed to `founder' all relate to `laying down'. The ship sinks - lays down on the rocks or sea bottom. The man founded the company - he laid down the first stone, the money, the legal documents etc. A horse that founders lies down. I rest my case.

[Stanley]

It's as good an attempt at an explanation as any. Word meanings and place names are very similar. Very often more than one version. You takes your pick!
Funny, but archaeologists spring to mind, if they find something that's a mystery many start attributing 'ritual' significance to it.
David, the horses. Commiserations Old Lad!

[Tripps]

Watching Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares - saw a guy with a very short haircut and Immediately thought - he could do with a 'pow slap'

Googled of course - just one reference, and by the look of his name I'd guess he's from Oldham.

[Stanley]

It sounds familiar but I have no memory of ever hearing it David.

[Stanley]

One of the delights to be found in Dorothy Hartley's book 'Food in England' is the fact that over the years she garnered many old words no longer in use today. Yesterday's delight was that the word 'wort' was commonly used to refer to any vegetable. (Old English wyrt, of Germanic origin; related to root..
'Nep' is another similar word referring to root, think of parsnip and turnip. (neep (n.) "a turnip," Scottish and dialectal, from Middle English nepe, from Old English (West Saxon) næp, Anglian nēp, "turnip," from Latin napus.) I knew the Scottish usage, 'Haggis and neaps' but not the broader medieval meaning.
(Why does useless information like this fascinate me so much?)
Later... I heard a man use a word I hadn't come across before. It's one of those poetical terms that have escaped most of us.
"caesura (n.) "a pause about the middle of a metrical line" (often coinciding with a pause in sense), 1550s, from Latin caesura, "metrical pause," literally "a cutting," from past participle stem of caedere "to cut down" (from PIE root *kae-id- "to strike"). In classical use, "the division of a metrical foot between two words, a break within a foot caused by the end of a word," as opposed to a diaeresis, a pause between feet.
Do we need to remember this?

[Stanley]

Another little gem from Dorothy Hartley. Most of us have heard of the Sally Lund loaf and the fact that it was named after the woman who made it. Dorothy blows that one out of the water. She says that the bun, if properly baked was a rosy Brown on top and milk white below as called 'Sol et Lune', sun and moon. Sun on top and moon below. This was corrupted slowly until it morphed into 'Sally Lund' and a legend was born as it was made into an English loaf! (She has documentary evidence for this....)

[Tripps]

Why does useless information like this fascinate me so much?

Not useless at all. Keep it up.

I watch a lot of TV quiz type programmes, and the level of 'ignorance' among the competitors is amazing. I excuse most of them on the grounds of age and inexperience. It seems the more they have access to an infinite store of knowledge (via google) the less they want to know.

Candidates on the Apprentice last night (all for example didn't know that a 'mortar board' was an item of academic dress, and no one seemed to have heard of a 'bushel'.

PS After due diligence I find an outfit called 'The Bushel Box in their search area. No doubt arranged by a PR firm for them to visit and publicise. Well it's worked!


PPS I've sent for the Dorothy Hartley book. Looks good for £3.41 inc p&p.

[Stanley]

Sounds too cheap to be the one with the illustrations. If I am wrong you have done extremely well David. I think you'll enjoy her, she is very good value! (LINK)

[Stanley]

I think I have done 'manchet' before triggered by Dorothy. It was the name given to the finest white bread eaten only by the rich. It comes from 'maine' bread, 'hand bread' as opposed to 'trencher bread' which was baked to act as a plate for food and was not eaten. At the end of the meal the trencher bread soaked in food juice was given to the poor at the gate.

[Cathy]

My heart sank with your last few words Stanley.

[Tizer]

Cathy, at least it was given to needy people rather than to livestock.

[Stanley]

That was how things used to be Cathy and the sad thing is that if you look at the trajectory poverty is on now we are seeing exactly the same thing but now it's food banks if you are lucky. That's still crumbs from the rich table.