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A Selection from an A-Z of Exmoor Language and Dialect
ablow – blooming, full of flowers
buttons – sheep’s droppings
clinkerbell (Somerset) or conkerbell (Devon) – icicle
dimmet or dimpsey – evening dusk, twilight
emmet-batch or emmet-butt – an ant-hill
float-ore – seaweed from the shore, used as a fertiliser
gallitrap – a ‘fairy ring’ of dark green grass
halter-path – a route suitable for a pack horse, but not wide enough for a carriage
in-ground – enclosed land
Jack sharp – a sharp, tingling frost
keckers – the dried hollow stems of hogweed or cow-parsnip; also a word for the throat or windpipe
larks’ leers – arable land that has been left uncultivated and overgrown
maiden tree – a tree which has been allowed to grow naturally without being cut or trimmed
nap – a short, steep hill, often features in field names
oolypuggers – bulrushes
parish lantern – the moon
quag – a dangerous bog that looks solid on the surface, but may sink an unwary horse and rider
reen or rhyne – a deep man-made ditch used to drain the moors
scare-devil – swift, named for its screaming call
tallet – a hay loft, often over a stable
upright – the main stem of a stag’s antler; other stems of the antler include the bow, bay and crocket
vore-zunded – facing the sun, on the sunny side
worts or hurts – bilberries (the full word, whortleberry, was considered ‘fine talk’)
dinder-ex – a thunderbolt
yark – wild and stormy weather
zwer – a whizzing noise, as made by the sudden rise of a covey of partridges
A row of seven beech trees on a small hill in the sun on a warm summer morning near Lucombe in the Exmoor National Park. Luccombe, Exmoor. Somerset. July 2013
I have long been interested in the relationship between landscapes and the language that we use to describe them, and when I wanted to research the place of local dialect in this relationship for my Masters in Environmental Management I knew that Exmoor, with its high moors, rushing rivers, coasts, cliffs and woodlands, would prove a fascinating area to study.
The English language – or rather, languages – used to be a patchwork of distinctive local dialects, but these special and specific ways of speaking have been eroded over the past century and more, as people’s mobility has increased and technologies have exposed us all to a more standardised form of English. This process has happened everywhere, but dialect remains closest to the surface of the collective memory in places such as Exmoor that are rural and have more continuity of communities connected to the land.
I visited archives to pore over written accounts of the dialect historically spoken in West Somerset and North Devon, gathering together a glossary of dialect words and phrases local to Exmoor and its surroundings. I cast the net wide, working to a loose definition of landscape that included wildlife, folklore, farming practices and weather words; and the result was an Exmoor glossary that stretched to over 2,000 local words and phrases.
As the glossary grew, I was struck by the enormous depth of information contained within it; and also by the risk of this information being lost as dialect gradually passes out of use. The descriptions given by many dialect dictionaries of the past – for example, Frederick Elworthy’s West-Somerset Word Book of 1886 – are often incredibly precise and detailed.
They reflect a deep intimacy and familiarity with the landscape and they pass on this knowledge for the reader to share, opening up the possibility of new ways to understand and appreciate what we see around us. The glossary that I gathered from these sources became a celebration of Exmoor’s past dialect, and how it can speak to us today.
A Different Way of Perceiving the Landscape
One of the joys of the Exmoor glossary is that it opens up entirely different ways of describing the landscape. It is possible to imagine alternative maps of Exmoor labelled with some of these words; but it is also something far more multi-dimensional than a flat sheet of paper. It provides you with words that speak of how it feels, or perhaps felt, to be in the landscape; not only what you see but what you hear (zwer – the noise of a covey of partridges rising), what you walk on (wet ground that may be muxy or puxy), even what you might taste (whortleberries) or smell (scented posies of boy’s love carried to church
on Sundays).
There is a huge variety of descriptive dialect words for different conditions of weather and light, very apt for a place where the experience of the landscape changes constantly through the days and seasons. This fine-grained description shows how people’s dependence on their interactions with the local environment was reflected in their vocabulary, offering a real sense of people living their lives surrounded and shaped by the elements, as a vital part of the place.
The language also has a physicality drawn from its basis in the everyday experiences and practices of people who have lived and worked on Exmoor. Even the marking of time is linked to physical practices, be it candle douting (meaning dawn, when the candles can be extinguished) or ripping time (spring, when the oak trees’ sap has risen so the bark can be ripped off easily for use in leather tanning). The landscape itself sometimes takes on physical forms from the body, imbuing it with a sense of character: the upland ridge known as The Chains may derive its name from chine, an old English word for backbone; drooping corn is said to be knee-bowed; and a long narrow portion of a field is called a legger.
Weather words in local dialect are wonderfully and countlessly varied. This image shows ‘chaungy’ or ‘chongy’ (changeable) weather over Lynmouth. The conditions could also be said to be ‘catching’ (rainy or showery) or ‘howderin’ (cloudy, overcast, threatening, stormy). (Photo by the late Julia Amies-Green, copyright David Green.)
Heritage and Folklore
Particular elements of the history and cultural heritage of Exmoor come through strongly in the glossary. The practice of stag hunting, controversial on Exmoor today, featured so strongly in the historic sources that it filled a whole section in the glossary. This included many different names for the deer themselves and for different parts of their horns and antlers, as well as terms that describe the different stages of the hunt. Linguistic and physical heritage neatly dovetail together in the many dialect terms for man-made structures, particularly farm buildings which are often described in some detail in the recorded sources. A linhay or linney is a shed or outhouse, for example; except when it is joined to a shoeing-forge and is more likely to be called a pentice (penthouse).
There are a number of terms in the glossary that tell of local beliefs and folklore, especially to do with animals. Shrews were believed to have the ability to paralyse horses and cattle by creeping over their backs, leaving them shrowcroped; while hedgehogs – vuz-pegs – were thought to steal apples from orchards by rolling on them and carrying them off on their spikes. Heading further into the realms of the supernatural, the yeth-hounds were said to be a phantom pack of hounds that could be heard hunting across the moorlands at night.
Some landscape features are interpreted through local legends, such as the presence of a heap of unusual quartz stone boulders at Winsford known as the devil’s lapfuls. The story goes that the devil, wishing to build a bridge across the River Barle, was carrying these stones from elsewhere in his apron for that purpose. At Winsford his apron-string broke and the stones fell to the ground, whereupon the devil changed his mind and set to building Tarr Steps from slabs of the slaty local rock instead.
Animals and Plants
The glossary contains a huge number of words relating to wild animals and plants. On Exmoor, as elsewhere, biodiversity has seen significant declines during recent decades, so this richness of language may be evidence of a past that was also much richer in wildlife. The glossary shows what we have lost, giving blackcock and heath-poult as names for black grouse, sadly no longer found on Exmoor. It is also a reflection of the fact that people living here in the past were much more familiar with, and reliant on, the other species that made their homes here. There is beautiful detail in some of the descriptions; for example, bracken is named oak-fern because if the bracken stalk is cut across near the root, there are dark markings within it that resemble an oak tree.
The names given to animals often also suggest their preferred habitat or their habits. Examples of this include variations on dish-washer or wash-dish for the various wagtail species often found by water; vuz-napper for the whinchat found on moorland – vuz being the dialect term for gorse; and wood-carrier referring to caddisfly larvae that build a protective casing for themselves from fragments of wood and stone. Some names sum up their animal subject with deft economy and simplicity – a dormouse is a sebn slaper (seven sleeper) or sleep-all-the-winter; a goldfinch a proud tailor; and a bat variously aerymouse, flittermouse, leathern mouse or leathern-bird. Many of the names of bird species are descriptive of their calls – pink-twink for chaffinch, ackymal for blue tit – further conveying the sensory experience of Exmoor’s landscape and wildlife.
One of the Whit Stones, Porlock Common. Heather in the local dialect is often referred to as ‘yeath’ or ‘yeth’ and gorse as ‘vurze’ or ‘vuz’, so the characteristic hardy ponies and sheep that graze these uplands are known as ‘yeth-croppers’ or ‘vuz-croppers’. (Photo copyright Andrew Wheatley.)
Farming and Land Management
The landscape of Exmoor has been shaped by a long history of interaction between people and the land, and this is strongly evidenced by the dialect terms that tell us about how the land has been farmed and managed. The farming-related words in the glossary provide descriptions for very specific practices and processes, such as half down (a type of ploughing that turns only a shallow sod, in order to rot the surface growth), and also for the tools that were used, including drashel (a flail for threshing corn) and browse-hook (used for trimming hedges). There are also words that show the close connection between animals, people and place through exchanges that are both quotidian and intimate, such as the specific calls used for driving different livestock – hobe! and jup! for cows and bullocks, chook! and ougs! for pigs.
There are words that describe local customs of property, land ownership and inheritance, such as the term cradle-land meaning land that would descend to the youngest son or brother instead of the eldest. This literal handing on of the heritage can help trace the human history of particular parts of the land through surviving field names, which can show where a piece or portion of land was given to an individual child (for example, Jenny’s Piece).
Landscape Features
The fact that there are locally specific words for a whole range of landscape features makes it possible to describe the landscape in a way that often feels more authentic and appropriate. Words such as ball (a rounded hill), goyle (a ravine or deep gully) and ruse (a small landslip) have sprung from and describe this particular landscape; because of this they fit the landscape more perfectly and can communicate sense of place better than Standard English, which of course itself has origins in specific dialects, usually those of the south-eastern UK.
For the visitor to Exmoor, there are also a number of potential ‘false friends’ – landscape terms that in the dialect mean something distinctly different from their Standard English meaning. In the dialect, a hill is a common or piece of unenclosed land, no matter what its elevation might be. A lake is always running water, usually a small stream. Marsh implies rich grazing land rather than a bog; while a moor in the Somerset sense might imply swampy land rich in rushes rather than heather-covered upland.
The path in springtime. This well-worn path may be a drove or driftway used to drive cattle. The ‘blooth’ (blossom) of the ‘May-bush’ or ‘hag-thorn’ (hawthorn) will ripen over the summer into the dark red berries locally called ‘aggles’ or ‘pigs-hales’. Hag-thorn is an interesting one where the dialect reflects the Old English roots of the word – it stems from haga-thorn, meaning hedge-thorn. (Photo copyright Jane A. Mares)
Keeping the Dialect Alive
It is difficult to know for sure how much local dialect is still known and spoken on Exmoor today. My research incorporated some interviews about this and while most people talked about the dialect dying out, there was also a sense that if you head to the right places – the cattle market, for example – there is still a distinct local vocabulary alive and well on Exmoor. Dialect is naturally a spoken medium and in writing it down some of its magic is inevitably lost, but preserving written records may now be the best chance we have of keeping open this window that offers such a unique view to the landscape.
When we lose this type of language, we also risk losing the knowledge encoded in it about our heritage and our connection to the natural world. This theme is explored more fully in Robert Macfarlane’s book Landmarks, which made use of the Exmoor landscape glossary that I compiled. Local dialect also features in a series of interactive coast path Story Walks, commissioned by Somerset Council and created by Chris Jelley of Seven Fables book and art emporium in Dulverton (W: englandcoastpath.storywalks.info). Celebrating dialect in
this way helps to keep this knowledge alive so that local people and visitors to Exmoor have opportunities to deepen their experience and learn about the place, past and present.
Find Out More
We suggest making a large pot of tea and having a look at Meriel’s comprehensive paper. There are so many words which cross over and the lists make absolutely fascinating reading! The paper is called ‘Locating the Language in the Landscape: Dialect in Exmoor National Park’. You can read it in its entirety, including the 2,000-word glossary, here.
You can also find Meriel on Twitter: @merielharrison and second-hand copies of Elworthy’s book can sometimes be found online.
Exmoor has an incredible past for you to explore, our favourite Historical attractions include Tarr Steps, Cleeve Abbey and Dunster Castle to name but a few. Many of our cottages are listed buildings for you to enjoy, have a look at our Boutique and Unique section to find a magical place to stay
Dialect 01
Weather words in local dialect are wonderfully and countlessly varied. This image shows ‘chaungy’ or ‘chongy’ (changeable) weather over Lynmouth. The conditions could also be said to be ‘catching’ (rainy or showery) or ‘howderin’ (cloudy, overcast, threatening, stormy). (Photo by the late Julia Amies-Green, copyright David Green.)
Dialect 02
One of the Whit Stones, Porlock Common.Heather in the local dialect is often referred to as ‘yeath’ or ‘yeth’ and gorse as ‘vurze’ or ‘vuz’, so the characteristic hardy ponies and sheep that graze these uplands are known as ‘yeth-croppers’ or ‘vuz-croppers’. (Photo copyright Andrew Wheatley.)
Dialect 03
The ‘daze’ (gleam) of the sun, above Tarr Steps ‘clapper bridge’. Dialect words used locally for bridge include ‘burge’ and ‘clam’ or ‘clammer’ (this has many uses in describing bridges, including to denote a pole or plank across a stream or a stone placed over a stream to form a footbridge). (Photo copyright Adam Burton)
Dialect 04
At Luccombe in summer. ‘Brow’ and ‘hoe’ are local terms for a hill, while a smaller rise in the ground might be called a ‘batch’ – a word that is also used for an ant-hill. Exmoor has many ‘cleevy’ or ‘nappy’ fields, meaning that they are steeply sloping. (Photo copyright Andrew Wheatley)
Dialect 05
The path in springtime. This well-worn path may be a drove or driftway used to drive cattle. The ‘blooth’ (blossom) of the ‘May-bush’ or ‘hag-thorn’ (hawthorn) will ripen over the summer into the dark red berries locally called ‘aggles’ or ‘pigs-hales’. Hag-thorn is an interesting one where the dialect reflects the Old English roots of the word – it stems from haga-thorn, meaning hedge-thorn. (Photo copyright Jane A. Mares)
