Yorkshire Words Of The Week

My father used the word sauflidaunce to describe an indecisive person of either sex.

He lived in Holmfirth. Recent research has failed to find anyone who knows of such a word.

My parents also used pottyclock to describe an inefficient person. I wondered if this was based on someone who walked in an unusual manner, hence pottering. Most enjoyable column.

From: Ronald Marchant, The Paddock, York.

I ALWAYS like to read Yorkshire Words of the Week and spot the few I know. But there is more to how you say something; there is what you say.

I had been in my Suffolk parish about 25 years and I was talking to an old chap one day.

“We know you come from Yorkshire,” he said.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“You say what you think,” was the reply. Suffolk people like to keep themselves out of things.

We would have no hesitation in starting: “Do you know what I’ve heard? I’ve heard that....” In Suffolk, it is simply: “They say that....” (nothing to do with me – it’s “them”.)

From: Eileen Rennison, The Yorkshire Dialect Society, 42, Green Lane, Clifton, York YO30 5QX.

THE Yorkshire Dialect Society was founded in 1897 with the aim of keeping dialect alive.

Our Summer Bulletins and Transactions are the two publications which are free to all members.

Transactions comes out at the end of the year and is the more serious and academic of the two, while Summer Bulletin is a more light-hearted affair and consists of members’ contributions.

Good luck with your support of Yorkshire dialect which is an important part of our heritage.

Contact: [email protected]

More contributions are needed from readers please if we are to keep this weekly column going and help keep the lifeblood of Yorkshire dialect, in all its quirky richness, circulating vigorously. Please send letters or emails to Michael Hickling at Country Week.