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ANT; A TOURIST (Cornwall)
Emmet is rooted in the Old English word aemette, which, on the basis of either dropping or hanging onto the median vowel, can be found in two synonymous English words: ant, the standard, and emmet, the dialect version. Its first appearance is in a ninth-century Kentish glossary, where emetan is the word chosen to translate the Latin formicae. From this early start it has remained a dialect term. In the nineteenth century it meant a ‘lively person’, at least in Northants, but it is in its modern use, and in the holiday county of Cornwall, that it has gained its best-known definition.
An emmet today is likely to be the term of choice for one of the hordes of tourists who descend annually on Cornwall’s local beaches and beauty spots. Such teasing is first recorded in print in the 1970s, but it was very likely around somewhat earlier than that.
to pour tea (Somerset)
A shortened form of empty, recorded across the South with reference to all sorts of drinks but also in Somerset with specific reference to tea, empt has been used for a number of senses of empty since Anglo-Saxon times. The association with the pouring out of a drink, though, is distinctive to the southern dialect use. Ent, meanwhile, is a variant found in Cornwall and shares the same history.
See KETTLE’S ON, and also BIRLE, HELL, MASH, MASK, SCALD, SOAK, TEEM, WET
alleyway (Liverpool)
Ennog is one of two alternatives Liverpudlians have at their disposal to describe an alleyway, the other being jigger. Ennog describes a small urban alleyway between buildings, and is probably a diminutive form of entry, with -og being a variant of the suffix -ock (as in hillock).
See BY THE WAY, and also ENTRY, GINNEL, JIGGER, LOAN, LOKE, SNICKET, TWITCHEL
alleyway (Scotland, the North and Midlands)
Entry has meant ‘the entrance to a building’ and, by extension, ‘a gate or door’ since the fourteenth century, but what distinguishes the local entries in Scotland, the Midlands and the north of England from those in standard English is that they don’t lead into anything. They are simply alleys leading between houses from one place to another. The transfer of use probably arose from alleyways which had the doors or entrances of a number of houses running off them. The stereotypical back-alleys of terraces are a good example.
See BY THE WAY, and also ENNOG, GINNEL, JIGGER, LOAN, LOKE, SNICKET, TWITCHEL