A Glossary Of Words And Phrases Pertaining To The Dialect Of Cumberland

A Glossary Of Words And Phrases Pertaining To
The Dialect Of Cumberland (1878)
by William Dickinson
Published For The English Dialect Society,
by Trubner & Co., 57 & 59, Ludgate Hill (1878)
PDF | English | 36 MB | 430pp

The work is a second edition, revised and extended, of "A Glossary of the Words and Phrases of Cumberland", published in Whitehaven, in 1859, which has for some time been out of print. The changes in this edition are numerous, both in the way of omission and addition. As regards the omissions, many words previously included were merely corruptions or peculiar pronunciations of ordinary current English. These it has not been deemed necessary to retain. The rule of exclusion, however, has not been absolutely or rigorously observed, because some Cumbrian forms of common English cannot without explanation be made intelligible to people living beyond the borders of the county.
In treating of Cumberland words, it must be borne in mind that, small as the county is, having an area of only a little over fifteen hundred square miles, it possesses its geography of language, ranging across the county in tolerably distinct bands, and each preserving its substantive identity with the fidelity attaching to a national language, but occasionally shading into and blending with the others, its immediate neighbours.

All the glossaries and publications in the county dialect, hitherto met with by the author, are local, and unavoidably provincial ; or are indiscriminately intermixed, and consequently imperfect. An attempt is made to render this one more perfect, by localizing each word and phrase. The sources from which information has been derived are, a frequent, or rather an almost continuous, personal business intercourse with nearly all classes of the rural inhabitants of nearly every parish in the county during the greater part of a half-century ; the inspection of various glossaries of Cumberland and north-country words ; a rigid search through the publications met with in the dialect of the county ; the contributions of friends ; an intimate acquaintance with the mother tongue of the county, and a lifelong residence in the central district described.

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