Gaskell House Blogs

Lancashire Dialect Quiz – the answers

Posted
7th December 2017
in blog

For those of you who took part on our Lancashire dialect quiz as part of our Lancashire Day celebrations then here are the much debated answers to the quiz.

1.    Bairn – Scots and Northern English meaning child – Old English ‘bearn’

2.    Pop – to pawn – (‘pop one’s clogs’)

3.    Fettle – to mend – Old English ‘fetel’

4.    Snig – eel – presumably derived from ‘snake’ (‘slick as o’ snig’)

5.    Welly – almost – possibly from ‘well-nigh’ (‘Welly Clammin’)

6.    Threopin’ – arguing – Old Norse ‘threa’

7.    Gern – snarl – Middle English ‘girnnen’

8.    Clem – starve – Old German klemmen ‘to pinch’

9.    Gradely – fine, excellent – Old Norse ‘greidhligr’

10.  Addle-yedded – empty-headed

A winner has been picked and will be contacted shortly.

Once again thank you to Dr Simon Rennie, Lecturer in Victorian Poetry at the University of Exeter, for his assistance with this quiz.

FYI – you can hear Simon on Radio 4 this Friday (8 Dec) at 4.30pm on Feedback.  He will be talking, with his partner Libby (EGH Volunteer and Chair of the Gaskell Society), about how a radio programme changed his life.

 

To begin with the old rigmarole of childhood…

Wives and Daughters