Wednesday, April 20, 2016

English has, or at least had, some pretty stange words

Many, MANY moons ago, as a callow, sickly and geeky pre-teen, I remember being fascinated by the breadth and the sheer immensity of the English lexicon. There seemed to be so many words that it was almost impossible to make up a word that did not already exist somewhere in the thickest English dictionary. So, of course, that is just what I would try to do.
In particular, it was not so much the fancy inkhorn terms that charmed me - the extravagant, self-indulgent Latinate constructions so popular with writers and academics in the 17th and 18th centuries, words like ingent, devulgate, attemptate, obtestate, fatigate, deruncinate, subsecive, nidulate, abstergify, arreption, suppeditate, eximious, illecebrous, cohabit, etc, etc - although these also have their own appeal. For me, it was mainly the shorter, more unprepossessing words that caught my attention, many, but by no means all, derived or adapted from Old English or Norse, as I now know.
For example, if there exists a strange word like snot, I would wonder why was there not also a word drot? If we have catch, then why not gatch? If bonk, why not nonk? Bigger, migger; gold, jold; throat, broat; and so on and so forth.
Fast forward to 2016, and my bathroom calendar of Forgotten English is teaching me that many such words probably did exist in some part of Britain, even if they are not in currency today, along with many others difficult to invent or imagine. Here are just a few examples:
  • poat - to walk quietly and unobtrusively
  • elench - a subtle or fallacious argument
  • gowk - a cuckoo
  • siker - dependable, without doubt
  • fidther - a rustle, such as a mouse might make
  • gussock - a sudden strong gust of wind
  • fragor - a strong, sweet smell
  • slurg - somnolent, in a sleepy state
  • skaffay - short-lived or disturbed sleep
  • cloffey - a slattern or tawdrily-dressed woman
  • plunt -  a walking stick with a large knob
  • shegger - to beat an opponent in a game of chance
  • blague - a hoax or pretence
  • sharooshed - taken aback, surprised, disgusted
  • bossack - an ache, discomfort or ailment
  • astone - to confound or astonish
  • tumbies - ablutions, having a bath
  • grannows - streaks of dirt left on clothing after poor washing
  • gocks-bobs - amazement, surprise
  • hoorip - very fast, esp. of boiling water
  • drent - drowned
  • chouse - to cheat or defraud
  • bleezed - sozzled, slightly inebriated
  • prigge - to steal or filch
  • scorse - to barter or exchange
  • thruffing - the whole matter
  • luby - good clothes, Sunday best
  • gafty - doubtful, suspect
  • tucket - a musical flourish
  • gleek - a joke or jest
  • tift - something as it ought to be, or under perfect conditions
  • cowse - to pursue animals, to wander about idly
  • whilt - an idle or indolent person
  • tutty - cross, irritable
  • arg - to quarrel, argue
  • lashigillavery - plenty of food and drink
  • chowp - to prattle, chatter
  • slatch - an interval of fair weather
  • carriwitchet - a perplexing or puzzling problem
  • doggerlone - wreck or ruin
  • culch - a great quantity of rain
  • woofits - hangover
  • pungled - embarrassed
  • skice - to race about
  • chuffy - haughty, proud
  • puggle - to stir or stoke a fire
  • blunk - a fit of squally, tempestuous weather
  • stife - obstinate, inflexible
  • conny - pretty, comely
The more I think about it, the more I realize that, at some point in history, in some obscure corner of Britain, there probably WERE words like drot, gatch, nonk, migger, jold, broat, etc.

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