Gervase Phinn: As clear as mud

I assumed that everyone knew what "mardy" meant, despite the fact that it does not feature in the computer thesaurus. It is such an expressive word for that sort of whining, sulky spoilt child ("with a face like a smacked bottom", as my grandmother would say) and was so well used when I was a youngster that I assumed everyone knows and uses it.

"The sight of the steam train on its journey from Settle to Carlisle, clickerty clacking down the line," I wrote, "puthering sulphurous smoke and smut and sounding the shrieking whistle reminds me of the heady childhood days." Here was my editor again with her pencil. "Puthering?" Then she got to "crozzled" and "sprag" and "wammy".

Yorkshire dialect is full of the most vivid and unusual words, intriguing examples of how English language continues to be the most quirky language in the world. Three colourful examples are "stridewallop", the term for a tall and awkward woman, "shot clod", which describes a drinking companion only tolerated because he pays for the drinks and "crambazzled", used to describe someone who is prematurely aged through drink and a dissolute life.

I had never come across the words "fornale" (to spend one's money before it has been earned), "cagg" (a solemn vow to abstain from strong liquor for a period of time) and "petrichor"(the agreeable smell in the air after a rain shower) until I met the professor of linguistics who introduced me at a conference. He had heard of all three and many more. He was a self- confessed "bowerbird" – someone who accumulates an amazing collection of quite useless objects.

When, as a school inspector, I visited Upper Nidderdale High School for the first time, I sat with a young man looking through his work. It was wonderfully descriptive and entertaining but I stopped at a word he had used and I had never come across before. I asked him what he meant.

A slight smile came to the boy's lips and his expression took on that of the expert in the presence of an ignoramus – a sort of patient, sympathetic, tolerant look. He had written in his account that his father, a farmer, had arrived home on the Friday night after a really tough week thoroughly exhausted.

He used another colourful word for "thoroughly exhausted" which I will not repeat but I am sure it is one with which you are familiar. However, the boy had written: "My dad came in from the fields, flopped on the settee and said, 'I'm fair riggwelted'.'' He explained: "It's a word which describes a ewe when she's heavily pregnant, so heavy you see, she falls over on her back and just can't move, she's helpless. Sticks her legs in the air and just can't shift. It's called 'rigged', proper word is 'riggwelted'''.

Some weeks later, a Minister of Education inquired of me how the teachers were coping with the recent changes in the National Curriculum. I smiled and just could not resist. "They are feeling fair riggwelted," I replied.