BS: Odd, rare words

Subject: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Will Fly
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 04:43 AM

I've always been fascinated by words, their origins, meanings and usages, and some words - for no particular reasons - I find oddly curious. I'm sure you'll have your own personal oddities, but one that I find persistently odd is "tracklement".

The OED defines a tracklement as a jelly eaten with meat [British, rare], and I always thought it has a Victorian or Georgian feel to it. Imagine my surprise to find the word was coined around 1950 by a food writer called Dorothy Hartley, though it may have been based on a much earlier word like "tranchiment" that was in use in Northern and Central England.

There's actually an English firm called Tracklements that sells things like sticky fig relish, old-fashioned picallili, hot garlic and other "charcuteriments".

Got an odd word for the thread?

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 05:17 AM

Spanghew is one of my favourites. (Merriem-Webster: to throw violently into the air; especially : to throw (a frog) into the air from the end of a stick)

A word that seems unnecessarily specific.

More here.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 05:19 AM

My mother used the word "nesh" constantly
I only ever encountered it elsewhere once, in a Mrs Gaskell Novel
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 05:32 AM

Not odd but crossword words, etui, ennui, or maybe espy and I’m sure there area few other “e-” or “be-” ones...

I'd not call "nesh" as in a bit feeble that unusual in home usage.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Ian Hendrie
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 05:32 AM

Sesquipedalian, ultracrepidarian and gongoozler appeal to me, and I managed to get them all into a song (for better or worse).

Leave Me Alone

There's an explanation on the linked song lyric page.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 05:53 AM

Saw this in a crossword this morning ' commination ' I had to resort to a dictionary.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 06:07 AM

"I'd not call "nesh" as in a bit feeble that unusual in home usage."
Thanks for that Jon

I've often wondered - is "making a hames" of something common outside Ireland
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Iains
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 06:18 AM

yoke seems to have a specific meaning in Ireland as a general term for a “thing”, an implement, a contrivance.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 06:29 AM

Musing on 'defenestration'

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 06:34 AM

"I've often wondered - is "making a hames" of something common outside Ireland"

I think word usage varies from area to area. My parents are Shropshire and Norwich and a large part of life on the N Wales coast... That's not an expression I can remember hearing in use where I've been.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 06:40 AM

Word usage certainly varies area by area. We always referred to "a rasher of bacon" so it jars a bit when you come across something like this:

'If you are well read, or you know someone who traveled forward from the 16th century, you may be familiar with the term "rasher of bacon," but wonder exactly what it refers to. Is this a big hunk of fatback, or what?'

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Will Fly
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 06:44 AM

"Nesh: was common usage around the Lancaster, Garstang and Preston areas when I was there many years ago. "Cold" was its meaning there - "Bye, it's nobbut a bit nesh this mornin'".

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 06:47 AM

Mmm. puzzling rather than jarring. What do others use, a "slice" of bacon?

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Iains
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:04 AM

I heard nesh in Gloucestershire with the meaning weak and susceptible to cold, as in 'I feel a bit nesh this morning'

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:09 AM

Saw this in a crossword this morning ' commination ' I had to resort to a dictionary.

Didn't know that one Dave but I often refer to a dictionary. Probably the most used app on my phone and tablet is the Chambers dictionary app. I can also cheat with that one as it will solve anagrams and fill in the blanks for known letters when I get really stuck.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:11 AM

My uncle had a mahogany cabinet, which to all intents and purposes looked like a bedside cabinet but a bit taller. He called it a 'purdonium' which I realised in later life was the correct name for a coal cabinet, That explained why his cabinet had a metal box inside which pulled out at an angle. Love the word 'Purdonium'

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jos
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:13 AM

A rasher is a slice, surely. Nothing more complicated and certainly not rare or unusual in my experience. However, on reflection, I would expect ham to be cut into slices, not rashers. Maybe 'rasher' is just used for uncooked bacon.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:14 AM

OK, again only encountered in crosswords but how about a pantechnicon.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:16 AM

"Hames" in Irish Traveller parlance refers to part of a horse's harness
In Sullivan John" for instance,
"When my brother James got the belt of a hames"
In Ireland, it means to make an awful mess of something
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jos
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:27 AM

A word I remember from childhood is charabanc (pronounced 'sharrabang') - a carriage or bus with bench seats from the early days of coach outings.

Another word that has become rarer is 'skein', now that such knitting wool as can be found in shops comes ready rolled into balls. Wool used to be sold in skeins, necessitating the sociable activity of winding it into balls, with one person holding the wool on outstretched hands while another person wound it (though it was perfectly possible to do it on your own if necessary).

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:37 AM

Interesting the "nesh" one now I ask mum. I've tended to use it as more generally "wimpy" but Pip (Shropshire) would take more of the specific lack of resistance to the cold meaning.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 09:53 AM

Oblisokollix (well, it's ancient Greek but English hasn't come up with its own word for it in 1500 years).

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jos
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 11:01 AM

A word I don't hear often but find rather beautiful is 'threnody'.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 12:11 PM

I'd never heard the Scots word "smoor" until my wife Pat used it - lovely word
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 12:25 PM

A rasher is a large amount of bacon that can become many slices, or the amount of presliced bacon in a packet.
Eschew obfuscation! Ubiquitous.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 12:32 PM

In the UK a rasher of bacon is exactly the same thing as a slice.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 12:52 PM

A very bad word which is unfortunately nowhere near rare enough is "albeit." I will never use that piece of pretentious nonsense. Let's make it as rare as possible so that it may fit into this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Gutcher
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 01:47 PM

Before retiring to bed we would cover the peat fire with the ash of burnt peat--this was called smooring the fire--a few blasts of the hand bellows in the morning brought the fire alight, perpetual fire.
Something like the Muirton kail {soup} which was proved, in court, by a farmworker to be seven years old.

When someone has the hames put on them{a figure of speech} they are dissuaded from some {usually bad} action.

The hames were, as Jim says, a part of the horse harness, they being the parts that projected above the collar like two horns.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Gutcher
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 02:00 PM

When the hames were put on the collar they were joined at the top, when not on and not connected at the top they somewhat resembled a flail and to be belted by them as in the song would be like having a thrashing from a flail, very painfull.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 03:20 PM

Thanks a million Gutcher - much appreciated
Then there are the dirty ones of course
I was feeling unwell at work once and was told I was "the colour of boiled shite"
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jos
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 03:35 PM

'albeit' is a perfectly good, useful and pleasant word as far as I am concerned. The word I currently hate most is 'inspirational'. Why not just say 'inspiring'?
(Apologies for a post that is in this case NOT about a rare word.)

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 06:35 PM

The OED gives quite a variety of dialect meanings of "nesh", of which it says the "most prevalent" is "tender, delicate, weak; unable to endure fatigue or exposure; susceptible to cold". That makes it hard to guess what it might mean in a particular context. Furthermore, the OED does not mention the only meaning in which I have ever seen the word, which is given in the glossary of Hugh Macdiarmid's collected poems as "full of awareness":

Till clear and chitterin' and nesh
Move a' the miseries of his flesh.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:36 PM

nesh means you're feeling a chill. its very common in Derbyshire. mind you its bloody cold in the Pennines.

In the song Sullivan's John, my bother James/ got a rap of the hames.

I asked Paddy Reilly about what it meant. He said it means James got bashed on the head by the harness. He added, it means the end of the argument.

I suppose in the way you refer to it Jim, it refers to the harness getting ravelled and in a mess, perhaps?

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 07:51 PM

"Glugger" - rurally an egg containing no feasible chick, but used widely in Ireland to describe an action that fails or a person who makes a mess of what he or she attepts

"a dote" ("you're a dote")
An expression of thanks or admiration for haveing done somebody a favour.

Similarly "Your blood's worth bottling" - very much Dublin, I think

"a gobshite (Liverpool and Ireland - opposite of above

Does anybody still use the word "Segs", describing hard sore skin under the feet
(My mother used to berate me for sprawling around the house, saying "if you don't shift yourself you'll end up with segs on your arse"

Am enjoying recalling these immensely - thanks Will
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 08:14 PM

I just found myself using "umquhile" in another thread. I don't recall ever needing it before; intuitively "erstwhile" didn't quite convey the same shade of meaning but I'm not sure why not. (Maybe "umquhile" refers to former existence, "erstwhile" only to former attributes - your erstwhile bank manager might be in jail for fraud, your umquhile bank manager has to be dead).

The life experience that did most for my vocabulary was getting hepatitis A when I was a kid and spending three weeks in bed vomiting every half hour or so. Reading anything that required extended attention was out; following links through the Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary was fascinating. But I have still never found a way to drop "omneity" into a conversation.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 09:00 PM

Hmm, well what is odd and rare to one person may be standard parlance to another! Having moved up to Scotland from England in the late 80s, i had to learn a whole new anatomy and physiology to be able to understand what my patients were complaining of: "sair heids, hirpling, oxters, rifting, hunkers, haunds, pinkies" and many more. They're not so rare here, but were rare to me then!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 09:53 PM

Massachusetts: "wicked pissa" for cool, neat.
In Southern Ohio: "a-doy" for 'duh', obvious.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:07 AM

We used the word "segs" for hard scabs on the feet - the same word was used for the hobs on hobnailed boots. On Sunday evenings in the summer, my grandad would sit on the back step with a cobbler's last and do his "snobbin'l - fettling his work boots with new segs.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:09 AM

"Snobbin'"

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:18 AM

A Norfolk word - Strook
We heard it from singer Walter Pardon

J C:   Were they fuss about how the songs were sung Walter, the speed and things, if they heard somebody singing, they were fussy about it?
W P:      Oh my, yeah, they’d have, what they called the right strook.
J C:   Right?
W P:    Strook, S, T, R, double O, K; was always called strook
J C: And that was the speed, was it?
W P:    Yeah, it was always sung fairly steady; well, a lot of them now, they are in too much of a hurry to get through a song; the same with playing, you see, fast as possible, no one’d keep up.
Well, I remember Dick playing a step-dance tune at Cromer.
Two of them step dancers say, “we can’t dance to that, we can’t get the steps in”, that was right.
They step out that tune like that (demonstrates), they hit out a note.
That is right, they never did go very.... there, never did play a hornpipe all that quick, not as quick as all that.
They said again, they must play.... “you must play the right strook”.
Well, that used be said about anybody who was very slow, I think I put that in the book, “Only two strooks, slow and stop”, someone who was slow, you know.
That’s an old Norfolk expression, strook, yes, that was an old expression used, died out now, I know I heard that a good many times, strook.

Blás - from Clare singer, Tom Lenihan meaning relish, taste, feeling

J C What’s the word you used Tom, this afternoon; ‘blás*’ what…?
T L The blás, that’s what the old people used to use; if you didn’t put the blás in the song.
The same as that now the…..as we’ll say ‘Michael Hayes’, ‘The Fox Chase’:

(sung at his usual speed)
I am a bold and undaunted fox that never was before on tramp,
My rent, rates and taxes I was willing for to pay,
I lived as happy as King Saul, and loved my neighbours great and small,
I had no animosity for either friend nor foe.

You have to draw out the words and put the blás in the song. If you had the same as the Swedish couple:

(sung too fast) Now I am a bold and undaunted fox that never was before on tramp.
The blás isn’t in that, in any bit of it. You see now, the blás is the drawing out of the words and the music of it.

Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:20 AM

Dickie for Donkey,dags for a mist, dricht for a miserable damp cold drizzle

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: The Sandman
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:27 AM

Silly wind [suffolk again], like the first two i quoted

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Mr Red
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 07:50 AM

The OED defines a tracklement as a jelly eaten with meat

In the Black Country (think UK, England, Industrial Midlands excluding Birmingham (definitely)) traNklements are the ephemera that you have but are not essential. Jewelry for instance but is could be furniture or clothes. It is a somewhat dismissive term.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 08:10 AM

Bandoline sounds musical but is not, its for setting hair

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 03:18 PM

Odd rare words find plenty of space to roam about
in Stephen R. Donaldson's fantasy fiction.
Like the Thomas Covenant book series.

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 03:29 PM

Roup - Wonderful, if sad word meaning a farm sale of family goods when they are forced to quit their Homes

From MacColl's Tenant Farmer

Well, what wi' the cost o' the feedin' stuff and the landlord's rent increases,
They turned us oot and they held a roup o' a' our bits and pieces.
Your fairm's owre sma', nae use at a', and the owner needs the land,
Times are changed, we dinna need a tenant fairmer.

A moving Fictional account of Robert Burns' family 'roup' can be found in James Barke's 'Wind That Shakes the Barley'
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Raedwulf
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:16 PM

Gormless is a good one. What's a gorm, anyway, that not having any... It comes to us from Scandinavian (i.e. those bloody spam-lovers!)) 'gaumr' - craft. So craftless, knowledgeless, clueless...

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Raedwulf
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:23 PM

Alas, poor Mrrzy! Rushing rashly in (see what I'm doing there), a rasher is simply a slice of bacon. Not the whole hog, as it were. According to my OED, "Origin unknown"!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Raedwulf
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:30 PM

Jim - Strook is almost certainly simply 'stroke' i.e. 'beat' in the local accent (and I live in Norfolk meself). If you want a proper Naarfook word - yaffle. Who remembers Bagpuss? Yep, Professor Yaffle. It's not a made up name. A yaffle is a green woodpecker!

Subject: RE: BS: Odd, rare words
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Jun 18 - 11:29 AM

Haruspicy and hepatoscopy are not exactly words you'd run across in daily life today, but were at one time known as 'the inspection of entrails if slaughtered animals for divination and omens.' Hepatoscopy was specific to reading the liver.
I used to check new dictionary programs for for Haruspex