Durham & Tyneside Dialect Group / Word Lists / Cockfield C20/2
COCKFIELD C20/mid - LIST FROM HARRY PEART
Words from "my childhood and adolescence growing up in the mining village of Cockfield, CO.Durham." Compiled by Harry Peart.
Allies: glass allies - glass marbles. (See benders)
Ambulance: The colliery alone had ambulances for injured miners and family members. (See Fever Van)
Bait - Packed lunch. Bait tin.
Barmpot - daft, idiot,
Benders - Ball bearings used in marbles.
Bleeser - Blazer, A sheet of steel held up at the fire to force a draft up the chimney.
Boody - pieces of broken crockery to put down around the hen crees.
Booler - A iron hoop or old bicycle wheel rim for bowling along.
Bray - To hit or smack a child.
Bully beshers - A kind of fish in the local streams.
Cack: Cack-handed - awkward, clumsy, left handed. Also a crude word for excreta.
Cheffoneer - A piece of furniture (Chest of drawers and a cupboard) that often held a feather mattress. From the French Chiffonier.
Chitlins - intestines from chickens etc.
Chollops - Cheeks or jowls.
Chapped - Sore skin from the winter cold and snows. (See Snowfire)
Chuck - To throw.
Clarty - Muddy.
Claw hammer coat - Long tailed coat worn by the undertaker.
Clemmy - A stone for throwing. (Hoying a clemmy)
Clink - Prison or jail.
Cloggy patten - The snow building up on clog soles. [note: both clog and patten are words for a wooden-soled shoe - BG]
Claggy - Sticky.
Clootie - Clootie dumpling. [note: boiled in a cloth - BG]
Clout - to be hit, or any kind of old cloth.
Cohope - Call to bring in the horses.
Consumption - TB, tuberculosis. Galloping consumption; Severe rapid progress TB, medical name, Miliary Tuberculosis.
Cowp yu creels - To turn head over heels on the ground. 'Forward roll'
Crackett - A small stool.
Cushope - A call to bring in the cows.
Cuddy wifter - Left hander; also the name for a donkey.
Dabber - Piece of slate or object to use in the game of Hitchy Bays.
Dither - to shake/shiver. To mess about, to waste time.
The Fever - Usually Scarlet fever. The fever hospital (Isolation hospital) and fever van.
Fever van - The vehicle (ambulance) for taking infectious patients to fever hospitals.
Flem - Mucous/sputum coughed up
Four eyes - Anyone wearing spectacles.
Galawa - A horse often a pit pony. From Galloway.
Glishy - bright sunlight especially after rain.
Gobbler - Turkey.
Goosegog - Gooseberry. also someone getting in the way of courting couples.
Guiss Guiss - A call to bring in the pigs.
Gumboil - Tooth abscess.
Gurn - to pull a face (plus Gurning competitions)
Gyat - Gate.
Hitchy Bays - Hopping game in & out of marked bays, usually square.
Hoggers (Pit hoggers) - three-quarter length trousers for working down the mine
Hoy - To throw.
Jarping - To hit hard boiled eggs together to see which one broke.
Jessie: A right Jessie - soft, girlish, etc.
Jim Crow: Look out man for miners playing Pitch & Toss.
Keppers - Plus fours, Crudely called 'Shit kepers'
Ket - anything cheap and nasty particularly sweets.
Kitty catcher - Kiddy catcher, truancy officer. (Always around); Lop a Kitty: Boys game, a type of leap frog.
Lame: a canny lame - to have a good enough injury to warrant compensation.
Last - A cast iron device for repairing shoes on.
Left footer - Catholic.
Lisk - the groin area. Site of ruptures.
Lonnen - country lane.
Loppy - flea ridden.
Means test man - Most feared and hated man inn the village. (Lots of nick names for him)
Nocky nine door - Knocking at doors and running away.
Nithered, Nitheration - Very cold.
Niver in creation - Never in this world.
Oxter - Armpit.
Paste or Pace eggs - Hard boiled eggs that were rolled down a hill at Easter time. Usually had been dyed by onion skins or decorated.
Peffy - Breathless, hard to breathe.
Pittle - to pass urine. Pittly bed, a dandelion, or a bed wetter.
Pitch & Toss - Miners gambling game throwing up two pennies.
Plodge - To paddle in the water.
Poss, Poss stick - To poss the clothes in a tub with a poss stick.
Proddy, Proggy - a mat made from strips of cloth pushed through a Hessian backing. Sometimes a label for Protestants, Methodists.
Puddens - Internal organs. 'Its puddens were hanging out'
Pump - to place the flat hand under the armpit and make a sound by pumping the arm up and down against the flat hand and chest wall. Or to pass wind, (fart)
Sally Army, Sally bash - Sallies; The Salvation Army.
Scuttle - Coal scuttle to carry and store coal in for the fire.
Shaky down - an improvised bed on the floor
Shows - The shows; A fairground.
Shuggy boats - Fairground swing boats, where 2 people sat opposite and pulled on ropes.
Skitters - To have loose stools, mainly applied to cattle but also to a severe bout of diarrhoea.
Slavver - To dribble or slaver from the mouth.
Snaggers - turnips. (Go snagging turnips, to chop off the leaves)
Snicket - narrow passage between houses.
Snotty, Snotty nosed - Running nose, but also 'stuck up' (Snooty)
Snowfire - A solid block of ointment that was warmed by the fire then applied to chapped areas.
Splather - To spread stuff around untidily.
Spuggy - Sparrow.
Stane, Stuane - stone.
Stotter - the small piece of rubber inside a rubber ball. Or an overactive child.
Tanner - Sixpence. (Fish eye the name for the original sixpence)
Tiggy - Game of tag or hide and seek.
Tip cat - Village game hitting a cat (a pointed piece of wood) with a stick. A little like knur & spell.
Towser - The willy or penis.
Tin tacks - Any kind of small nails.
Yest - Yeast used for baking. Yeast bags were often sewn in pitman's jackets to carry 'log ends' home to chop up for sticks