English dialect

Can anyone from the Scottish borders tell me exactly what a " Puffy Dunta" is please ? It is one of 2 things - but which one? I have asked at talks about the borders but no one seems to know. But as a child it was in common use & the locals referred to them often.

Another one (& i know this) is a "Finnon" also used a lot years ago.

Sam - wasn't 'Finnon' ('Finnan' ) usually paired with 'Haddie' ... what we Sassenachs would call Smoked Haddock?

rgds

Bill

Edited By Cornish Jack on 23/04/2018 11:50:51

Perhaps nothing was out by more than a "gnat's cock"? I used to work with an elderly Black Country engineer who would only describe something as on the scunt if it was "up and down like Collins's Cocks". Funnily enough he had never heard of the famous racing cockerels.

Brian

We were a bit more genteel where I'm from (Derbyshire White Peak) because it was always within a "gnat's whisker"

...and old Humph on "I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue" always said within a "gnat's piccolo".

...and it was always known as "finny haddock" in our house too.

Jon

'Snap'. - I have never quite got my head round the term 'snap', meaning (I think) elevenses or packed lunch, carried in a 'snap tin' or 'snap box'. Only ever heard the term in North Nottinghamshire/South Yorkshire area.

A 'midges' is well known in engineering circles meaning a very tiny amount, as is 'Donald' (from Donald Duck) meaning broken, and describing a ship as a 'disnay ship' - further refined by enlarging to 'this disnay work and that disnay work' of Scottish or Glaswegian extraction.

Snap is any packed-up meal. Also into Derbyshire. Snap is always put up, as in "Put up your snap" rather than being made.

I always thought that "disnay" was the same as "dunna" or "does na", as in "doesn't" [work]?

Edited By Jon Gibbs on 23/04/2018 13:53:34

I came back from an international standards meeting in the US yesterday where the Italian Chairman, who likes to try to use different English idioms, misremembered and came up with...

"We should wash our dirty linen at home". Linen was also pronounced as line-en.

It was a pretty good try, infinitely better than my attempts at Italian, but, whilst all of the Brits got it, I think it left the rest of the meeting wondering what the heck he was on about

Snap is miners bait.

I can appreciate 'snap' being used by miners, it was back then a very mining area, but 'bait'?

Certainly 'bait' in West Cumbria, but that was a mining area as well, coal and iron

Even in the US a lunch pail is often called a bait can. Did we inherit that from you?

I've heard "bait" in Kent, although nowhere near as often as "beaver", but I haven't heard either for many years. Always assumed they came from bite and before (as in before lunch) although I wouldn't rely on my folk etymology.

Brian

(Edited to remove second "although" from a sentence - my grammar is appalling).

Edited By Brian G on 24/04/2018 08:49:38

I just threw the bait in for a sort of joke, I've no idea of origins. I'm from north England and bait was /is a normal word. Snap was a strange word used by southerners, or TV northerners. I never heard of lunch until I moved south.

I only ever heard "bait" coming from geordies

Rod wait till its a Bank Holiday for the BC Museum 99% of the atractions will be running or open. Book and pay online cheaper and saves waiting for an eternity.

Lunch pail?

I thought even Americans only ate chicken out of buckets?

Neil

The mill wenches from Lancashire always had Jackbit. It was used in some pits too

Roy