DIALECT AND WORD MEANINGS

[Tripps]

I am sure Stanley will know and others, when i served my apprenticeship in Hyde Cheshire, building machine tools, if you thought you had made one that was 101% , you could say " thats a Bramah", ?, it has a Yorkshire connection

I knew about Bramah from the lock point of view - but having now looked on Wiki Joseph Bramah there's a lot more to him than just locks.

[Stanley]

China, re. yellow dusters. During my researches into the condenser waste spinning industry (See LTP for Spring Vale) , I found that the yarn was used to weave cloth for raising, making it fluffy, like Winceyette for nighties and the lower grades for yellow dusters. Nobody could tell me why they were yellow. The one incontrovertible fact about yellow dusters is that the dye is unstable and a killer if inadvertently put in a hot white wash! Always boil them separately before considering them safe!
Joseph Bramah. A very competent engineer and innovator. Possibly his most useful invention was the Bramah Seal for hydraulic cylinder pistons, a 'U' shaped leather seal which expanded to fill the bore as pressure came on it. The principle is still widely used. Think of the washer in a bicycle pump.....

[chinatyke]

China, re. yellow dusters. During my researches into the condenser waste spinning industry (See LTP for Spring Vale) , I found that the yarn was used to weave cloth for raising, making it fluffy, like Winceyette for nighties and the lower grades for yellow dusters. Nobody could tell me why they were yellow. The one incontrovertible fact about yellow dusters is that the dye is unstable and a killer if inadvertently put in a hot white wash! Always boil them separately before considering them safe!

In the sixties I worked at CPA at Loveclough Printworks and I remember the yellow winceyette and what poor wash fastness it had. Made to be a low price, low spec cloth suitable for its end use. We also made cloth for coffin linings, the light and wet fastness was dreadful but the dyestuff was cheap and dark shades could be achieved. We used to store it covered over to stop it fading before it left the works. Again, horses for courses.

[Stanley]

Shortly after you were there I was doing the research at Spring Vale just down the road and I think the weaving branch of the firm used the Loveclough works for finishing cloth. A very small world!

[Tizer]

Wick. Why do we say "You're getting on my wick" when someone annoys us?

[Stanley]

That's a good one! Before I do any digging, what has always been in my head is that it referred to someone interfering with the wick on a lamp but on reflection, there are so many uses for 'wick' that this could possibly be just an image in my head. Apart from the use of 'wick' in place names, it is a loan word from the Latin 'vicus' or small settlement, usually taken to refer to a place or dairy farm, I find that Webster cites 'wick' as a term used in curling for the path between opponent's stones. That sounds handy to me. Could it originate in curling? Perhaps when someone had put in a blocking stone?

[Tizer]

We use `wick' to mean alive, moving, i.e. the characteristic of living organisms that a biologist refers to as `irritability', so I wonder if it's been used in the past to mean `nerves'...and therefore synonymous with "He's getting on my nerves".

[Tripps]

I think this word could keep us going for quite a while. Leaving aside the 'dwelling place' meaning as in Smethwick and another small town with which we all familiar. There's wick as in candles, and as in candlewick which is a bedspread. I think there's a comedy sketch in there somewhere. (4 candles) etc etc.

I cheated and googled, but this seems to cover the getting on my wick angle. Wick

I heard the phrase ' browned off'' used twice recently. Not often heard nowadays - WW2 slang I'd guess. I wonder how long this will be allowed, until it becomes unspeakable.

[Bodger]

A short history of our language,
http://vimeo.com/album/2895588/video/38855993

[Stanley]

I consulted Brewer Morris and Webster, no attribution for 'browned off' apart from saying it is slang....
( Noticed a derivation for 'bunce'. Reckoned to be a corruption of 'bonus'.)

[plaques]

I always thought there was an association with the first time troops travelling abroad on ships. If they lay in the sun too long and got sun burnt they would finish up on jankers. Browned off in more that one sense.

[Tizer]

I cheated and googled, but this seems to cover the getting on my wick angle. Wick

I can understand the rhyming and sexual aspect of wick in `dipping his wick' but it doesn't seem to make much sense in `Your getting on my wick'. I still think there may be a different origin.

[plaques]

To pull the wool over your eyes. A common enough saying but why 'wool' and at what time point did it become into common usage?

[Stanley]

'Pulling the wool...' Brewster says it goes back to the time when all gents wore wigs and wool was a common term for hair. If you tipped a man's wig over his eyes he couldn't see. Thought to be the origin of 'hoodwink'.

[Bruff]

I would note that in our house growing up, we would refer to creepy-crawlies as 'wick things'; and a dirty, dusty house was also 'wick'. In addition, to be 'wick' with something was to be full, or have a lot of it, as in 'it were wick wi' traffic'. Or, 'it were right wick that place, wick wi' dust an' wick things', if we must get all three uses in......

I remember once using wick in Sheffield to describe some untidy spot. When asked what on earth 'wick' meant I replied 'loppy'. The joys of dialect.

Richard Broughton

[Stanley]

Careful Lad! That flag's slape!

[Tizer]

When someone loses his job we say `he got the sack'. Is that because in the past he'd have to carry his stuff home in a sack?

[Stanley]

Tiz, according to Brewer you're right. In the early days, when the foremen sacked a fitter he gave him a sack to carry his tools home.
As we were coming back from the hospital yesterday Susan asked me what the origin of the name Wackersall Road in Colne is. I can't find anything, anyone have a clue?

[Wendyf]

There was a farm called Wackersall up there that the road must have been named after.

[plaques]

Quoting from "The History of Marsden and Nelson", "Whackersall was the name of the district lying between Whackersall Farm and Green Road. A farm of 7 acres was in existence in 1246 when Adam of Whackersall lived there".
The name obviously goes back a long time, so take your pick its either the farm or the district.

[Stanley]

I've done some more digging. No mention of Wackersall but the 'wack; element may come from the OE for willow, also connected with yield or weak.

[Tripps]

I heard Ken Dodd use the words wack, and wacker recently to describe a Liverpudlian. Haven't heard it used for a long time - seems to have been pushed out by scouse and scouser.
What say you Richard?

[Stanley]

I consorted with a lot of Wackers and Scousers in the Cheshires. It applied to those from Birkenhead as well.

[Stanley]

I think I may have mentioned this before... Reading Crossman Diaries I came across the archaic usage 'Dis-ease'. I'd forgotten that this is the origin of 'disease'.

[Bruff]

Well Tripps, I was by pure happenstance reading about 'w(h)ack' just the other day. It has indeed gone out of fashion as a term for a Liverpudlian,with few people, if any, using it any more. Where it comes from is not clear, as it was also used in parts of the Midlands and means 'mate' or 'pal'. There is the Liverpool dish Pea W(h)ack Soup, which you see on some restaurant menus here, tarted up often. It's essentially split pea and ham soup, like London Particular, and very nice too.

These days, you have scousers and scallies. Scallies is from 'scallywag', widely known and a quaint term for a scamp say in many places. But in Liverpool the scally is a member of the dissaffected youth, for want of a better term, and to be avoided - a pretty feral, violent type. In contrast to the scouser who retains the Liverpudlian traits of a fast mouth, a ready wit, an open heart, and a strong head and independant streak that for good reason sees them often described as the Basques of Britain.

Stanley - I'm not sure folk in Birkenhead would be happy being called scousers these days, or folk in Liverpool view them as such. And on the other side of Wirral, where I am, folk haven't got over being dragged out of Cheshire - the 'CH' postcode appeases them but they're unhappy with an '0151' phone number...............

Richard Broughton