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Transcriber's Note:

[=vowel] indicates vowel with a macron.
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             GLOSSARY OF WILTSHIRE WORDS


                        Oxford
        HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY




                 A Glossary of Words

                     USED IN THE

                 COUNTY OF WILTSHIRE.

                          BY

                GEORGE EDWARD DARTNELL
                        AND THE
         REV. EDWARD HUNGERFORD GODDARD, M.A.

                        London:

       PUBLISHED FOR THE ENGLISH DIALECT SOCIETY
  BY HENRY FROWDE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE.
               AMEN CORNER, LONDON, E.C.

                         1893.

               [_All rights reserved._]




PREFACE


The following pages must not be considered as comprising an
exhaustive Glossary of our Wiltshire Folk-speech. The field is a
wide one, and though much has been accomplished much more still
remains to be done. None but those who have themselves attempted such
a task know how difficult it is to get together anything remotely
approaching a complete list of the dialect words used in a single
small parish, to say nothing of a large county, such as ours. Even
when the words themselves have been collected, the work is little
more than begun. Their range in time and place, their history and
etymology, the side-lights thrown on them by allusions in local or
general literature, their relation to other English dialects, and
a hundred such matters, more or less interesting, have still to be
dealt with. However, in spite of many difficulties and hindrances,
the results of our five years or more of labour have proved very
satisfactory, and we feel fully justified in claiming for this
_Glossary_ that it contains the most complete list of Wiltshire words
and phrases which has as yet been compiled. More than one-half of
the words here noted have never before appeared in any Wiltshire
Vocabulary, many of them being now recorded for the first time for
any county, while in the case of the remainder much additional
information will be found given, as well as numerous examples of
actual folk-talk.

The greater part of these words were originally collected by us
as rough material for the use of the compilers of the projected
_English Dialect Dictionary_, and have been appearing in instalments
during the last two years in the _Wilts Archaeological Magazine_
(vol. xxvi, pp. 84-169, and 293-314; vol. xxvii, pp. 124-159), as
_Contributions towards a Wiltshire Glossary_. The whole list has now
been carefully revised and much enlarged, many emendations being
made, and a very considerable number of new words inserted, either
in the body of the work, or as _Addenda_. A few short stories,
illustrating the dialect as actually spoken now and in Akerman's
time, with a brief _Introduction_ dealing with Pronunciation, &c.,
and _Appendices_ on various matters of interest, have also been
added; so that the size of the work has been greatly increased.

As regards the nature of the dialect itself, the subject has been
fully dealt with by abler pens than ours, and we need only mention
here that it belongs to what is now known as the South-Western group,
which also comprises most of Dorset, Hants, Gloucester, and parts
of Berks and Somerset. The use of dialect would appear gradually
to be dying out now in the county, thanks, perhaps, to the spread
of education, which too often renders the rustic half-ashamed of
his native tongue. Good old English as at base it is,--for many a
word or phrase used daily and hourly by the Wiltshire labourer has
come down almost unchanged, even as regards pronunciation, from his
Anglo-Saxon forefathers,--it is not good enough for him now. One
here, and another there, will have been up to town, only to come back
with a stock of slang phrases and misplaced aspirates, and a large
and liberal contempt for the old speech and the old ways. The natural
result is that here, as elsewhere, every year is likely to add
considerably to the labour of collecting, until in another generation
or so what is now difficult may become an almost hopeless task. No
time should be lost, therefore, in noting down for permanent record
every word and phrase, custom or superstition, still current among
us, that