g
A MAN (ROMANY)
Gadjo is the Romany term for any man other than a Gypsy: in other words an alien or outsider. The female form is gadji, the plural gadje. Gadgie is an alternative spelling, and can, outside Romany circles, be used to mean ‘a man’, irrespective of ethnicity.
a term of respect, or used simply as a term of address (London and the North)
Gaffer, and its female synonym gammer, are probably shortened versions of godfather and godmother. Originally, it was a term applied to an elderly man, or one whose position entitled him to respect. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was the usual prefix, in rustic speech, added to the name of a man below the rank of those addressed as Master. In the nineteenth century, it took on the meaning that we are most familiar with today: ‘the foreman or boss of a group of workers’.
blister (the South-West)
Originally an Anglo-Saxon term denoting a sore or pustule specifically on a horse, gall is also used in the South-West to mean ‘a callous’, and outside the South-West to mean ‘a sore place’ in general. Galling comes from just that route, the verb gall that is described wonderfully in a seventeenth-century publication as ‘to gall, fret, itch; also, to rub, scrape, scrub, claw, scratch where it itcheth’.
See THERE’S THE RUB, below, and also BLEB, BLISH
It is not unusual to find words whose various dialect synonyms are linked together by alliteration. One example is provided by words for a rung of a ladder, such as staff, stale, stap, stave and stab. Blister is another. The word blister itself appears at the end of the fourteenth century, and blob a century later in Scotland. Subsequently, we have bleb, blish, blibe, blush, blaster and bladder (in Cornwall and Devon) and blaster (in Hampshire) to name but seven. One suggestion for the ultimate origin of these bl- words is that they imitate the shape of the lips making a bubble (and it’s certainly true that many of these words also have the meaning of ‘bubble’).
Alternatives not beginning with bl- are fairly rare – the most prominent of them being gall – but there does appear to have been a wider range before the twentieth century which have since sadly died out. For example, there were jags in the North-East, ercles in Shropshire and Worcestershire, flish in Yorkshire, glob and plish in Westmorland and gligs in Lincolnshire. All of which make good noises of the tongue, even if the thing they describe is to be avoided at all costs.
bold; mischievous (Scotland)
Given gallus’s somewhat sinister origins, it’s at first glance curious that the word has come to mean ‘bold, daring’ or ‘mischievous’, especially since the term is usually applied to children. And yet it does, and there is a logic to it. The original term is gallows, found as an adjective around 1425 and meaning ‘fit for the gallows’, ‘deserving to be hanged’, ‘villainous’ and ‘wicked’. Three hundred years later it had reversed its role – in a progress that can be found repeatedly in slang where bad is so often adopted to mean good – to be used as a general intensifier, denoting ‘very great, excellent’.
As a postscript to the story of the word, both gallus and gallowses take us today to Scotland and also America, where both terms refer to what Americans call suspenders and what the British call braces. Again descending firmly from the hanging gallows, the apparatus of judicial death, these modern-day versions hang cloth rather than human flesh: you can just picture a rural farmer, his overalls suspended by a single strap.
a tall, awkward woman (Yorkshire and the North; Scotland).
The word gammer was once a rustic term for an old woman, and is probably a corruption of grandmother (the male equivalent was gaffer). A stang, meanwhile, simply means ‘a pole’. In some places in Scotland and the north of England, someone who has somehow incurred the indignation of his or her fellow-villagers is compelled to ride the stang (either personally, in effigy, or by proxy), accompanied by a jeering crowd and sometimes, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘rough music’. There is also a New Year’s day custom by which every one met by the mob has either to ride the stang or pay a forfeit. Related words are gomerel, meaning ‘simpleton’, and gamphrel (‘blockhead’).
grandmother (Cumbria)
Ganny has been common in Cumbria and northern Lancashire since the nineteenth century. It is probably a localised version of gammer, a word for an old woman (and sometimes specifically a grandmother) that has in turn been recorded since the sixteenth century. Gammy emerged in Yorkshire at the same time, but doesn’t seem to have had the same staying power. Although the change from -mm- to -nn- is a common pattern, it seems quite likely that the influence of nanny is also at play with the development of ganny.
See OH MAI, and also GRAMMER, MAI, NAIN/NIN
threads, clothes (London and the South-East)
Garms is a term short for garments and, although dating back to Old London, is still in use by the capital’s teenagers today. Garms that are buff and criss (cool and stylish, or rude) are of course the best (or nang).
an ostentatious teenager who drives a souped-up car (East Anglia)
This playfully derogatory term for a boy who drives a ‘pimped’ car with an extra-loud exhaust and even louder stereo system emerged in the 1990s.
money (Yorkshire, now rare)
Gelt derives from the German and Dutch geld. It was first recorded in the 1520s, in the works of the poet John Skelton, and remained in general English use from then on in. In Yorkshire, especially in the nineteenth century, it came to be widely used in cases where the money in question is the profit from a specific enterprise. In the words of one egg-seller from Swaledale in the 1870s: ‘over went my egg-basket; so there wern’t much gelt out of that.’
See MONEY TALKS – OR DOES IT?, and also ACKERS, MORGS, REVITS, SPONDULICKS
a person from Tyneside; the Tyneside dialect (UK-wide)
The home of the Geordie depends very much on who is using the term. It can be the whole of England’s North-East, the area on the banks of the river Tyne or simply the city of Newcastle. But not Sunderland, where the nickname for its inhabitants is mackem. And definitely not Teesside, whose people are otherwise known as Smoggies.
No one knows for sure how the term Geordie came about, although everyone agrees it is a version of George, which was popular throughout England in the nineteenth century and the time that the term is first recorded, and particularly so for eldest sons born in the North-East. The Oxford English Dictionary’s first finding of it is from 1866 (although some collectors of dialect can pre-date that, and it is almost certain that the word was around in spoken English long before then). The OED quotes a publication that states that ‘The sailors belonging to the ports on the north-eastern coast of England are called Jordies.’ Six years later, the standard spelling had definitely taken over. At almost exactly this time, records show that the mining community of the North-East called pitmen Geordies, because of their use of George Stephenson’s safety lamp, which strongly suggests this as a source for modern Geordies.
There are other theories, however, including one well-established one that Newcastle was the home to support of George II during the Jacobite Rebellion of the eighteenth century.
Whatever its origin, Geordies speak with what has been called, following one newspaper’s national poll, ‘the most attractive accent in England’. As for their unique vocabulary, the wonderfully rich Geordie dialect is rooted in Old English, thanks to the North-East’s Anglo-Saxon settlers.
alleyway (the North-West)
This is the predominant word in the North-West for a narrow passage between buildings, to be found in Lancashire and West Yorkshire, and also in Cumbria and Cheshire. It is first recorded in a deposition to a Manchester court as far back as 1669. The pronunciation is ‘jinnel’ in some areas and ‘ginnel’ in others.
See BY THE WAY, and also ENNOG, ENTRY, JIGGER, LOAN, LOKE, SNICKET, TWITCHEL
senseless, foolish, flighty (Scotland and northern England)
Scotland’s glaikit means ‘stupid’, ‘foolish’, and in later use ‘thoughtless’, ‘flighty’, or ‘giddy’ (stereotypically of a woman). Where it comes from remains unresolved: glaik, meaning ‘mocking deception’ (not to mention ‘a flash of light’ or ‘a child’s toy or puzzle’), and used in such phrases as give or play [someone] the glaiks (‘to cheat or swindle’) and to get the glaik(s) (‘to be cheated or deceived’), would fit perfectly. Unfortunately though, glaikit, at least on present records, looks to be older. Another suggestion sees a link to gleek, a jibe or jest, or a coquettish glance. The jury is most definitely still out.
a glutton; an idle fellow (Yorkshire)
The gob, meaning the mouth and now considered vulgar in standard English, retains in dialect the sense it has had since the sixteenth century of ‘a lump or large mouthful of food’, especially of raw, coarse or fat meat. The slotch element of the wonderfully onomatopœic gobslotch is a rewriting of slouch, and so a gobslotch was also an idle, slouching fellow: a position resulting perhaps from the state of lethargy induced by too many gobbets (another term for those pieces of raw flesh).
Silly originally described someone who was deserving of pity, sympathy or compassion. It was not until the sixteenth century (over 100 years after its first appearance) that the word took on its main modern meanings of ‘foolish’ (lacking in judgement) and ‘stupid’ (weak in intelligence).
Attributing softness to silly people has been a repeated metaphor, with soft itself recorded from the seventeenth century. Others containing an element of that same metaphor include soapy, batchy, cakey and even barmy. It is present as well in the use of pudding to denote a silly person (common from the late eighteenth century). Daft is by far the most common alternative to silly, although barmy, gormless and soft all have their own areas of prominence.
There is a considerable range of registers among the less commonly recorded synonyms. For example, feckless in Lancashire sounds a lot more negative than daffy in Berkshire. The level of stupidity implied can vary too in line with the dual foolish/stupid meaning. People who are nutty or loopy may simply be silly in their behaviour, whereas someone who is half-sharp may not be able to help it. The wonderful dateless in Yorkshire suggests a person who doesn’t know what day of the week it is (compare to Wednesday-and-Thursday, see NO MEAN FEET).
But what a lexicon silliness provides. Roam the country and you can find a host of terms for it – some benevolent, some warmly affectionate and others downright despairing. You might, then, hear addled (Sussex), batchy (Essex), batty (South-East), cakey (Staffordshire and Shropshire), cranky (Midlands), daffy (Berkshire), dafty (Somerset), dappy (Essex), dateless (Yorkshire), dibby (Lincolnshire), dozy (North), feckless (Lancashire), gaumy (Staffordshire), gawky (South-West), gone (Somerset), half-cracked (Somerset), half-sharp (Huntingdonshire), kimit (Hertfordshire), loony (East Anglia), loopy (South-East), noggen (Cheshire), nutty (Lincolnshire, Sussex), potty (South Midlands), puddled (Sussex), queer (Somerset), rooky (South-East), soapy (London), touched (South-East) or wappy (Leicestershire).
See also ADDLE-HEADED, BARMY, DAFT, FOND, GORMLESS, QUILT, SOFT
silly (Lancashire)
Gormless derives from an Old Norse word gaumr meaning ‘care, heed’. It is first recorded in the mid-eighteenth century in Lancashire, but subsequently moved out to West Yorkshire, Westmorland and across the North Midlands. The early dialect evidence is in the form gaumless (or gawmless), including a use in Wuthering Heights, and gormless appears to be a respelling as the word passed into general informal English at the end of the nineteenth century. Gormless retains, however, cultural connotations of the industrial North and of its speech, as in Stan Barstow’s play Joby: ‘She’s bloody gormless enough to imagine owt.’
See DON’T BE DAFT, and also ADDLE-HEADED, BARMY, DAFT, FOND, QUILT, SOFT
a fool (Scotland and northern England)
Like a number of terms that equate an animal and its stereotyped characteristics with humans and their way of life, gowk was originally a term for a cuckoo, but it went on to mean ‘a fool or awkward person’. Whether the foolishness goes with the bird’s notorious nestlessness, it’s hard to say, but certainly cuckoo itself has meant ‘mad’ or at least ‘eccentric’ for some time. The dialect version of gowk, meanwhile, has given rise to a number of compounds: to give the gowk to, ‘to fool someone’; to hunt the gowk, ‘to go on a fool’s errand’, and the resonant gowk’s-storm, ‘a springtime storm’. Gowk-thropple (a thropple being the throat) is an imaginative name for bad language.
See also A PINCH AND A PUNCH, and also APRIL GOWK, FOOL GOWK
grandmother (the South, especially the South-West)
Having exactly the same geographical spread, grammer clearly forms a pair with granfer. In the nineteenth century, grammy is recorded in Oxfordshire and Somerset, and seems similarly to parallel granfy. It has also been collected by researchers in Lincolnshire, which again fits with the evidence for granfer.
See OH MAI, and also GANNY, GRANFER, MAI, NAIN/NIN
a woodlouse; a millipede (Cornwall)
This colourful term seems to have originated as a joke among the young, for while grammer in many counties has meant ‘mire’ or ‘dirt’, in Cornwall, where grammersow belongs, it has long meant ‘grandmother’. The louse is probably being referred to as a grandmother’s pig or sow – the idea being she is too old and frail to look after the real thing.
grandfather (the South)
Although gramp is now widely used across Britain, especially in its plural form gramps, it first arose in the south-west Midlands, recorded in the English Dialect Dictionary of 1902 in Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. Half a century later, during the Survey of English Dialects at Leeds University, its range had widened naturally to include the neighbouring counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Monmouthshire and Northamptonshire. You can also find it in Liverpool. It is, very simply, a shortening of grandpapa.
See ‘GRANDAD, GRANDAD …’, and also GRANFER, GRANSHER, GUTCHER, TAID
grandfather (the South, chiefly the South-West)
Granfer (or grandfer or gramfer or granfy) is the dominant informal form of grandfather in the south of England, and has been since the middle of the nineteenth century. It is particularly associated with the South-West; one of the characters in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd is described as ‘his grandfer’s own grandson’. The same formation has also been recorded, usually as granfa or grandfa, in Lincolnshire, Norfolk and south Nottinghamshire. Grammer is an exact parallel or pair, meaning ‘grandmother’.
See ‘GRANDAD, GRANDAD …’, and also GRAMP, GRANSHER, GUTCHER, TAID
grandfather (mid-west England and south-east Wales)
An informal form of grandsire, gransher is recorded in south-east Wales and in the counties of England close to the Welsh border, such as Gloucestershire and Shropshire.
See ‘GRANDAD, GRANDAD …’, and also GRAMP, GRANFER, GUTCHER, TAID
The history of dialect words for grandfather is for the most part the history of shortenings, informal uses and pet forms of standard words. Of these standard words, grandfather is not, in fact, the earliest. That title goes to grandsire, which is recorded at the beginning of the fourteenth century, over a hundred years before the first occurrence of grandfather. In Scotland, the altered form goodsire became the standard form over the course of the fifteenth century. Both of these terms have now all but disappeared from standard English, but retain a presence in regional English precisely in shortened, informal versions, such as gransher and gutcher. This kind of variation on grandfather is visible from the eighteenth century, with grandpa, grandpapa, grandpappy and grandpop all emerging by the end of the nineteenth. Most of these terms are now part of general informal language and have lost any regional affiliation they might once have had: grandpa, for example, seems once to have had a strong association with East Anglia.
There are, however, a bevy of local alternatives that persist: granda (the North), granfer (South-West), gransher (South Wales), bamper (Glamorgan), granfy (Somerset and Gloucestershire), grampy (South Midlands), grand (Wiltshire), granda (Scotland and the Isle of Man), grandaddy (Scotland and Northern Ireland), grandayer (Isle of Man), grandpap (Warwickshire), grandpop (Kent), grandy (Scotland), granf (Somerset), pap, pappy (Northamptonshire), pawpie (Scotland), pop (Berkshire and tadcu (south-west Wales).
The undoubted king of all grandfatherly names is grandad. It is first recorded in 1793 in Mrs Pilkington’s novel Rosina, in which one character worries he ‘might be caught napping like old grandad’. This date might seem surprisingly late for a word of such obvious derivation, but regular use of familiar words was uncommon in writing before the nineteenth century, so the exact age of those words is often difficult to document.
All in all it’s quite a list. Grandfathers have clearly been worthy of note.
See also GRAMP, GRANFER, GRANSHER, GUTCHER, TAID
How to talk like … the Cornish
The problem with all West Country speech is that unless you’re a local, the sound you’re probably most familiar with is some very, very distant ooh-arr approximation to a real south-western accent gleaned from radio or television. Some heavily rolled (rhotic) ‘r’ sounds, talk of ‘zydeRR’ and ‘vaRRmers’, and it seems that it’s job done. But that’s just what people disparagingly refer to as ‘Mummerset’.
The truth about West Country talk is, of course, a great deal more complicated, and there’s pretty well as much variation from Camborne to Chewton Mendip as there is from West Lothian to Wick. Of these West Country sounds, the least-heard nationally yet most distinctive are those of Cornish. And sadly for those who get all sentimental about the loss of the older, richer forms of accented British speech, you have to look rather harder these days to find the real clotted cream of a Cornish accent.
Recent surveys have shown massive dilution of the accent among young Cornishmen and women, and a tendency to adopt some of the far-from-local characteristics of vernacular English. Most notable is what linguists call ‘TH-fronting’, or in layman’s terms the use of ‘v’ to represent the ‘th’ in words like mother and father. Today ‘muvver’ is no longer alien to Cornish mouths and even an elderly man and otherwise very pure dialect speaker was recorded not so long ago pronouncing with another as ‘wiv anuvver’. Old Cornish speech, along with the vocabulary to match, is usually found among the elderly inhabitants of the villages, close to the land, to the former tin industry and the (still just surviving) china clay business, and of course on the boats of the dwindling Cornish fishing fleet.
But when you hear it, there’s no mistaking it: crunchy voiced consonants abound (‘v’ for ‘f’, ‘z’ for ‘s’ – and yes, they do indeed talk of ‘vaRRms’ for farms and ‘zydeRR’ for cider); but they also talk of ‘vuzz’ for gorse (local pronunciation of the old word ‘furze’) and in the olden, more purely agricultural days, of ‘drash’ for thresh. You get the picture.
Cornish vowels, just like the consonants, are pretty mobile, so the long ‘i’ in life becomes more of an extended ‘ah’ sound – ‘maah laaf’ (for my life), ‘skaavin’’ (skiving – playing truant) and ‘samdaams’ (sometimes). And this is nothing new. All of 400 years ago, a nobleman from London, Richard Carew, reported in a famous compendious volume on the state of Cornwall, including a section on the way the locals spoke there in 1602. So, in a sort of audio time capsule that’s been passed down to us, we can read that the locals have ‘a broad and rude accent … specially in pronouncing the names: as Thomas they call, Tummas, Matthew, Mathaw: Nicholas, Nichlaaz, David, Daavi: Mary, Maari …’
Elsewhere among classic Cornish vowels, the ‘ow’ sound in our is sharpened to ‘aar’ – they talk of ‘aRR language’; and as for the long ‘oo’ sound that crops up in move, dilute, cool and so on, this among older and more traditional speakers emerges as a complicated cocktail of sounds with elements of ‘a’, ‘u’ and ‘y’ in it – ‘muyve’, ‘dahluyte’ and ‘cuyl’ would be some sort of approximation.
But true Old Cornish speech also uses ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ (often elided with the preceding syllable to become simple ‘ee’. ‘’Ere’s lookn at ’ee, maid’ would have been Bogey’s famous remark in a Cornish-language version of Casablanca). Also being eroded in the fast-fire snap and crackle of true Cornish is the little word ‘it’ – ‘it is’ and ‘it was’ readily turn into ‘tis’ and ‘twas’. And this chopping-out of syllables is a real feature of the accent. That lovely local term ‘directly’ meaning something like the Spanish mañana (but, as the old joke goes, without the same sense of urgency!) is always pronounced ‘dreckly’. There was even once a famous local bumper sticker announcing ‘Cornish People Do It Dreckly’.
And nowhere more than in the county’s place names, embedded in the landscape by years of highly local speech, are such eroded forms to be found. So Launceston is ‘Lanson’ (and ‘like Lanson Gaol’ is an old dialect expression for describing a mess or a muddle), Fowey is ‘Foy’ and St Austell ‘Snaazl’.
In Cornwall you’re quite likely to be greeted as me ’ansum (my handsome), still a regular form of address or affection. Ansum or ’andsome is Cornish for beautiful or fine. Unless, that is, you’re an emmet (ant), used to refer to incomers or tourists, tolerated for their money-spending propensities. Among the older generation, at least, a girl or daughter is a maid, and something that’s good or appropriate is often fitty. If the tacker (child) is squallin’ (crying) it’s maybe just because she’s irritable or teasy. If you’re rude, though, you’re likely to be called forthy, just the sort of thing to make someone mazed (annoyed); on the other hand, maybe you’re just rigged up (excited). Time perhaps to calm yourself down with a bite to eat – your croust (packed lunch) is in your bag, and consists of tiddy oggie (potato pasty). If you don’t, you run the risk of ending up wisht as a winnard (sick as a redwing).
SIMON ELMES
small worthless apples left on a tree (Wiltshire)
A grig, in the fifteenth century, was a diminutive person or thing, while a grig-hen in some counties is still the preferred term for a short-legged hen. This sense of smallness may be the source of griggles, which are the small apples left on the tree by the picker as they are too little to be of any value.
tourist (the West Country)
The term grockle originated in the West Country, specifically in Torbay, where a local once supposedly remarked that the stream of visitors to the town resembled ‘little Grocks’ – a reference to the celebrated nineteenth-century Grock the clown, real name Charles Adrien Wettach. Soon it spread throughout Britain’s holiday resorts where the local people used to deride the flocks of annual visitors to their area. The term was never fully popularised until the making, in 1962, of the film The System (starring Oliver Reed and Barbara Ferris and otherwise known as The Girl-Getters). As explained by etymologist Michael Quinion, ‘the word was popularized because of its use in the film, the script-writer having picked the word up from the locals during filming in Torquay.’
Further research by a local journalist in the mid-1990s linked the word ‘to a strip cartoon in the comic Dandy entitled “Danny and his Grockle”’, in which the grockle was a magical dragon-like creature. A local man, who had had a summer job at a swimming pool as a youngster, said that he had used the term as a nickname for a small elderly lady who was a regular customer one season. During banter in the pub among the summer workers, the term then became generalised as an expression for summer visitors. It’s probably a safe bet that this anecdote marginally preceded the making of the movie, but it is thanks to the film that grockles are now truly out there (much to the locals’ disgust).
sediment at the bottom of a cup or glass (Cornwall)
Grouts (also known as groushans in West Cornwall) refer to any form of gritty sediment, including the lees (or dregs) of wine or beer, or the deposits left at the bottom of a cup of tea or coffee. While it is related to the material that DIY-ers put between tiles in its consistency and its etymology, its application is very different, certainly in the context of declaring that something can be ‘as sweet as grout’, in other words like the last part of a cup of tea, with the sugar left unstirred at the cup-bottom.
Grout comes from Anglo-Saxon grut, which in turn corresponds to the Middle Dutch word grute or gruit, meaning ‘coarse meal’, ‘peeled barley or rye’, ‘malt’, ‘flavouring for beer’, or ‘yeast’. It was first recorded around 725. Thus many of the original uses of the word referred to beer: either to new ale, weak or second-rate small beer (once drunk rather than water, and by all ages and at any time of the day, hence the idiom), or to grout-ale, which was sweet, heady ale. A grouter was an inn-keeper, and a grout-night a feast at which all enjoyed themselves thanks to the consumption of grout-ale. The sole party-pooper is the Shetlands where grout refers not to ale, but to the refuse of fish livers after the oil has been melted out. Not quite so tasty.
great; good (the South-West and particularly Bristol)
Gurt, or its counterpart girt, can be heard in Bristol from the mouths of both young and old. It is a simple twist on great, and is an all-purpose term of approval which can precede virtually any adjective or noun.
grandfather (Scotland now rare)
Gutcher is a word that has recently become rare having been common in Scotland for four centuries. It began life in the early 1500s as a variant of goodsire, a Scottish equivalent of grandsire; goodsire is first recorded in the fifteenth century and it too continued in common use until the early decades of the twentieth, after which it fell out of use. Gutcher was also recorded in the north of England in the nineteenth century by Louis Lucien Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon, who was born in England after his parents were arrested at sea by the Royal Navy and who went on to become one of the most prolific of all collectors of British dialect words.
See ‘GRANDAD, GRANDAD …’ and also GRAMP, GRANFER, GRANSHER, TAID
gym shoes worn in schools (Scotland and Northern Ireland)
Few items evoke such strong memories of primary schools as the sight of a geometry set, a tub of PVA glue or a pair of plimsolls, daps or gutties. Made of black canvas and vulcanised rubber, gutties are still used in primary schools today. Used in Scotland, it is believed that the name is a contraction of gutta-percha, the Malay term for India-rubber.
In parts of Scotland, guttie is used to refer to other items made of rubber, ranging from golf balls (guttie ba) to catapults.
See ANYONE FOR SANNIES? and also DAPS, PUMPS, SANNIES
Word-lovers are not used to looking at shoes to fulfil their interest (any more than shoe fetishists are used to looking at words). Boots and shoes have never been terribly productive of colourful local synonyms. But the soft, rubber-soled PE shoe has enough variation on its own to make up for the lack of interest found elsewhere. The fact that there is no clear standard term helps in creating diversity. Gym shoes would be a neutral term, but while everyone would understand, not many would actually use it.
Plimsoll is the nearest thing to a standard, and is the dominant term in the South-East. It is found along the south coast as far west as Exeter, up through Berkshire, Bedfordshire and East Anglia, and in eastern Lincolnshire as far north as Grimsby. It also has an interesting etymology: it is named after Samuel Plimsoll, the Derby MP who introduced the Merchant Shipping Act of 1876, leading to the use of the Plimsoll line to show the safe level to which cargo may be loaded on a merchant ship. Apparently the rubber strip which covers the join between the upper and sole of these shoes reminded people of the Plimsoll line, both in appearance and in its function of ensuring watertightness.
In Scotland, sandshoe acts as a standard, which extends into the northeast of England as far south as Hull. The rest of Britain is filled up with a variety of terms ranging from pumps, which dominates the North and Midlands, to gollies, which is restricted to Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales. Northern Ireland has the curious mutton dummies. Recently more general slang terms for trainers have begun to proliferate, in tune with their greater fashion status. Some of these, such as kicks and runners, have also been applied to PE footwear, although this may mean no more than that flashy trainers are increasingly being used for PE in place of the traditional plimsoll.
Last on the list, but still very much alive, are plimmies, sneakers (US in origin), and or squeakers (now widespread).
See also DAPS, GUTTIES, PUMPS, SANNIES