l
A TERM OF affection (Liverpool)
This term, frequently added to the end of a Scouse sentence, is regularly used to signify Liverpudlian heritage, as it is in the name of the 1980s rock band The La’s, best known for their song ‘There She Goes’. The apostrophe in their name is correct, la being a contraction of lad. Today la can be used to address either sex in much the same way as mate or love is used elsewhere in Britain.
hideous, repulsive (Scotland and Northumberland; now rare)
A northern variant of loathly (basically equivalent in meaning to loathsome), laidly has been used in the north of England and in Scotland since the fourteenth century. The ranges of uses it shows cover physical repulsiveness (‘His laidly legs and arms covered with sores’), offensiveness and hatefulness (‘With laidlie language, loud and large’), and clumsiness or ungainliness (‘A laidly flup, a clumsy and awkward fellow’). The word is now vanishingly rare, but many of its uses are mirrored in modern Scots by minging.
See THE MIRROR CRACKED, and also BUTTERS, DUFFY, FUSTY, MINGING, MUNTER, OBZOCKY, RANK, SKANK
to play a game (Yorkshire)
If you are laikin at taws up a ginnel you are likely to be playing marbles up a Yorkshire alley. Laik derives from a Middle English word laike, which in turn derives from an Old Norse verb meaning ‘to play’. Laikins, up north, are toys, while in Yorkshire laiking can also be taking a day off work.
Lark, not dissimilar, may indeed be one and the same word, since it has been suggested that it is no more than a Yorkshire pronunciation of lake, as heard by visiting jockeys, sportsmen and the like who frequented the county’s hunts and horseraces. However there may equally likely be a link to the slightly earlier skylark, which, with its origins in the Royal Navy, must have referred to sailors scampering up and down the rigging of the nation’s ‘wooden walls’ (or defence ships).
Lake is primarily found in Yorkshire, and literally means ‘to exert oneself’, ‘to move quickly’, ‘leap, spring’ and even ‘to fight’. Also spelt laik, it has further uses including to play or to sport, with the amusements including the ‘game’ of romance, or, as previously noted, taking a day off work.
worn out, exhausted (Cornwall)
To be lampered, at least in Cornwall, is to be exhausted. Contrary to expectation it has nothing, even figuratively, to do with turning one’s lights out. The origin lies abroad, in the Norwegian dialect word lampa, ‘to walk with heavy steps’, ‘to beat or thrash’, suggesting the dragging steps of a tired person who lamps or lampers – or clumps along. The lamp itself represents the style of walking, while a lamper is a tall heavy woman. Lampered milk, meanwhile, has coagulated.
See ALL PAGGERED AND POOTLED, and also BLETHERED, BUSHWHA, DIRT DEEN, JIGGERED, MAGGLED, WABBIT
hungry (the South)
From a thirteenth-century word meaning ‘empty’, leer and leery have been used since the nineteenth century in the South, east of Dorset, and in the South Midlands, to mean ‘hungry’. The form lear is also common. The suffixed form leery becomes more common the further west you go, being recorded chiefly in Dorset and Somerset, but also in Devon and Cornwall where it comes second only to thirl. Like many words from the South-West, it is also recorded in Newfoundland in Canada.
See LEERY FOR LUNCH?, and also CLAMMED, CLEMT, HUNGERED, YAP
rags; shreds (Cornwall)
To larrup is to thrash violently (and is related to the equally aggressive to lace or to leather), often found in the context of the mythical but ever-popular Wild West. Lerrups are rags or shreds – with which some hapless varmint has been presumably larruped. A favourite Cornish expression, meanwhile, is to scat t’lerrups, meaning ‘ruin beyond repair’.
In a less melodramatic context, those same rags can also be scraps of butcher’s meat, or simply the rags of tattered old clothes. Whether it is the same word or otherwise, a lerrup can also be defined as ‘a lazy slovenly fellow’ or, in the female context, ‘a slut’ or ‘a trollop’. Perhaps the idea is that their morals are ‘in tatters’ too?
active (of a child) (chiefly the North-West)
Lish is probably a shortening of lissom with the final -s being changed to -sh (a fairly common linguistic phenomenon). It is recorded in Yorkshire from the eighteenth century with the meaning of ‘agile’ (and is also recorded in Scotland, especially in the form leish). The application to an active child is located chiefly in North Yorkshire, north Lancashire and Westmorland. Lissom is found in this sense in Wiltshire, Berkshire and Staffordshire.
See TEARDOWN TEARAWAYS, and also UNEASY, WAKEN, WICK, YAP
Alleyways are, like brooks and rivulets (see WATER WATER EVERWHERE), exquisitely local places. They exist almost on the boundary between public and private space, dark, secluded, their existence rarely widely known. They represent local knowledge at its most local and most practical in terms of geography, and the words for them do the same linguistically. Where they differ from the brooks of the countryside is in being part of the urban landscape. From the ginnels and snickets of Yorkshire and Lancashire, to the twitchels of the East Midlands, and on to the ennogs and jiggers of Liverpool, these local alleyways are embedded in the culture of the industrial towns and cities of northern England, as short cuts, meeting places, escape routes. Even alley itself is first recorded in the early sixteenth century describing the narrow back streets of early modern London. An alleyway in this sense is perhaps best described as something that you duck down.
That is not to say, however, that the alleyway is only urban. There is a similar rural tradition of words describing narrow country lanes, often between hedgerows. The loans and loanings of northern England and Scotland are just two examples, as are the lokes of East Anglia.
And that’s not all, for there is also a collection of other terms that all point to the importance of having a local term for those important byways of the village or town, where a lot of business (romantic, friendly and not so friendly) took place. They include close (Scotland and the North), drift (East Anglia), drove (East Anglia and South-West), gully (Lincolnshire and Berkshire), jennel (North-West), jetty and mear (Leicestershire), and tenfoot and twitten (Sussex).
See also ENNOG, ENTRY, GINNEL, JIGGER, LOAN, LOKE, SNICKET, TWITCHEL
country lane (northern England)
Loan is a northern variant of lane. It has been used in Northumberland, Cumbria, Durham and North Yorkshire since the nineteenth century to refer to narrow country lanes enclosed by banks or hedges. In Scotland, the word typically refers not to rural alleyways but to a larger lane or street, such as the main road through a village. Loaning is an alternative in the north of England, although less common in Scotland.
See BY THE WAY, and also ENNOG, ENTRY, GINNEL, JIGGER, LOKE, SNICKET, TWITCHEL
a sailor’s dish consisting of meat stewed with vegetables and various other ingredients (Liverpool)
‘So have up the anchor, let’s get it away.
It’s a good grip, so heave, bullies, way-ay!
Saltfish an’ lobscouse for the next half year
She’s a Liverpool packet an’ her Ol’ man’s the gear.’
So goes the sea-shanty ‘Rio Grande’. Setting aside what looks like a very early example of the use of gear as an expression of approval, and as popularised by Liverpool’s much-loved Fab Four, saltfish may be familiar, but lobscouse is a little less obvious. Lobscouse is in fact one of sea-going northern Europe’s best-known dishes, known in Norway as lapskaus, in Sweden as lapskojs and in Denmark as labskovs. The Hamburg version consists of corned beef, gherkin, beetroot and potatoes with an egg on top, but there are many others, the basics being meat, vegetables and potatoes. A meatless version is known as blind scouse. The exact origin of the word is debatable, but one expert suggests a blend of lob, ‘to bubble’, and lolly, ‘a broth’.
Most significantly though, the word, thanks to its maritime links, is the root of Scouse or Scouser, ‘a Liverpudlian’ (and the dialect they speak).
country lane (East Anglia)
Loke has been consistently used in East Anglia since the eighteenth century at least, always referring to a country lane which is enclosed by banks or hedges, or which is sometimes private property. It derives from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘enclosed place’. Lokes resemble urban alleyways in often being short cuts or secretive cul-de-sacs. A translation of the Song of Solomon into Norfolk dialect made in the nineteenth century sings, ‘In the lokes and causeys I’ll seek him as my soul do love.’
See BY THE WAY, and also ENNOG, ENTRY, GINNEL, JIGGER, LOAN, SNICKET, TWITCHEL