Yorkshire Words Of The Week

A YORKSHIRE woman never wasted, always made the best use of everything.

I often heard my Aunt, Doris Worth, say: “Ee I’d a nice drop of water left in t’bowl, so I gave t’ front step a wipe over”.

All clothes were washed carefully and Doris would say if she had washed a woollen item and it did not shrink: “Ee it nivver flinched”.

Conversely an item which did shrink was said to have “run up”.

Language was more descriptive in my childhood days. Should you feel very hot, you would say: “I’m stifled”. On very cold days people said: “I’m frozen stiff” or “I’m perished”.

When the weather was perishing , people would also say: “It’s a bit thin today”.

Doris had a lovely phrase for being out of breath: “I’m fair punctured”.

Long live As I Was Saying and the recording of all these fast-disappearing words and phrases.

From J Whyte, Symmons Close, Beverley.

My mother, born and bred in Sheffield, used words that I was convinced she had made up but having read Yorkshire Words of the Week, I realise Yorkshire is full of such words.

Here are some of mother’s words:

Cornish – mantelpiece, obviously from cornice.

Tranklements – bits and pieces, usually my toys. I have a tranklement drawer in the kitchen which holds the tin openers, corkscrews etc.

Collifobelling, this is similar to a word from an earlier contributor but my mother used it as having to fiddle with something in order to get it to work.

Scoppadiddle – this was someone hurtling about, usually me.

I hope that you manage to keep the column going, there has got to be more weird and wonderful Yorkshire words out there.

From: Mrs EM Child, Kilmidyke Road, Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria.

When my brother and I were children we lived next to a farm near Baildon in West Yorkshire. The farmer delivered our milk daily by ladling from a churn he carried.

One day he misfired and dropped a ladle full of milk on our doorstep. He was astounded at what he had done, and stood there, loudly exclaiming: “Nay the deggar – nay the deggar.”

We never knew who the deggar was.

My grandmother had a saying she would use for anything or anyone really dirty. She would describe them as being “black as watty”.