u
AN AMOUNT THAT is just about sufficient, but no more (Kent and the South-East)
The umbles that originally went into umbles pie and which were later playfully converted to humble pie were the entrails of deer, given to the peasants at a dinner while their loftier fellow guests were served the meat. Kent’s umblement may hark back to that bare nutrition, or it may simply be a contraction of humble amount. Whatever its origin, it manages to convey in a word what it takes standard English a sentence or two to deliver.
(of a child) active (north of England, especially Cumbria)
Uneasy used in this way seems to be a survival of a medieval sense of the word, namely ‘difficult, troublesome’, and which was common until about a century ago before fading from use. Bothersome in Manx English has the same history.
See TEARDOWN TEARAWAYS, and also LISH, SKOPADIDDLE, WAKEN, WICK, YAP
hedgehog (chiefly Yorkshire, Cumbria and Welsh borders)
Ultimately all urchins are hedgehogs. The word derives from the Norman French word hurcheon (of which the modern French herisson is a later form), which in turn derives from the Latin word for hedgehog, hericius. The word entered the English language in the fourteenth century, with its modern meaning (as in ‘street urchin’) not appearing for another 200 years. In its original meaning of ‘hedgehog’, urchin is now largely restricted to two areas. One is northern, including Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and is characterised by often having prickly before it, such as prickly urchin, prickly-back urchin, and so on. The other area of use runs along both sides of the Welsh border, and as far east as Staffordshire. The original sense of the word has survived in standard English too, in the name of another animal – the sea urchin. Indeed, sea hedgehog was formerly an alternative name for this creature.
See COUNTRY URCHINS, below
The word hedgehog is an obvious English compound, deriving from hedge and hog (i.e. pig). It isn’t surprising that people have historically created new variations by simply replacing one or both of these elements. So, hog has become boar and pig. Hedgepig is used by Shakespeare in Macbeth and is now still alive and well in the Home Counties and north-east Wales, while prickly pigs roam in Yorkshire, and hedgyboars can still be found in Devon. The main variant, however, is urchin, which derives from the Old French for hedgehog, hurcheon (still a word, incidentally, in Scotland and some parts of northern England).