Wiltshire Words
I was born and brought up mostly in Wiltshire although my parents weren't from there. The southwest has its own interesting vocabulary.
Girt, gert or girt? That is the question!
Thursday 27 March 2008
My brother kindly pointed out this web site with a Bristol flavour. They sell t-shirts with 'gert' on them, but they also seem to be having a debate about how to spell it!
So I did a little research on Google:
"girt big" returned 1450 hits
"gert big" returned 2590 hits
"gurt big" returned 1840 hits
Now I wouldn't call that conclusive so I'm going to stick to using 'girt' for the time being!
Please note that the web site above also sells t-shirts with the word 'daps' on them. So just in case you thought I was making these words up...
It were a girt big marrow
Friday 21 March 2008
Meaning big, great or possibly very. Usually used in conjunction with the word big: "It were a girt big marrow". Rarely heard outside Wiltshire, although I did find a colleague using it last year. It turned out he was from Wiltshire!
edited 27/3/08
Get your daps on!
Thursday 20 March 2008
'Gym shoes, plimsolls'. The word daps was used a lot when I was at junior school, but seemed to die out at secondary school. Don't know why - maybe the PE teachers weren't local. It's very specific to the south west of England according to my dictionary.
I used it in a game of Scrabble with Tim and was forced to get the dictionary to prove that it was a real word!