Rustic Speech and Folk-Lore. Elizabeth Mary Wright
to knock about, expose to circumstances of fatigue; kam, crooked, awry, e.g. It’s clean kam, an’ nowt else (Lan.), cp. ‘This is clean kam,’ Cor. III. i. 304; kecksies, hemlock, and similar hollow-stalked plants; keech, a lump of congealed fat:
I wonder
That such a keech can with his very bulk,
Take up the rays o’ the beneficial sun.
Hen. VIII, I. i. 54–6.
Cp. ‘Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher’s wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly?’ 2 Hen. IV, II. i. 101; kibe, a chilblain, a crack in the skin: ‘The age is grown so picked that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe,’ Ham. V. i. 153. An Irish recipe for the cure of kibes is as follows: The person suffering from kibes must go at night to some one’s door and knock. When any one asks ‘Who’s there?’ the person who knocked must run away calling, ‘Kibey heels, take that.’ Then the kibes will leave the person who has them, and pass to the one who called ‘Who’s there?’ Knoll, to toll; malkin, a slattern; mammock, to break or cut to pieces, tear, mangle; mated, confused, bewildered, e.g. I be reg’lar mated (Oxf.), cp. ‘My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight,’ Macb. V. i. 86; mazzard, the head or face; milch or melch, warm, soft, and moist, in the modern dialects applied chiefly to the weather, e.g. Ther’s a deäl of foäks is badly, an’ its all thruf this melch weather (Lin.), cp. ‘Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,’ Ham. II. ii. 540. The word is connected with Du. malsch, tender, soft, E.Fris. malsk, and has probably nothing to do with milch, milk-giving. Minikin, small, delicate, effeminate; moble, to muffle the head and shoulders in warm wraps:
First Play. But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen—
Ham. The mobled queen?
Pol. That’s good; mobled queen is good.
Ham. II. ii. 524–7.
Moble, Muss, Nook-shotten
Muss, a disturbance, uproar, squabble; neeze, to sneeze:
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear.
Mid. N. D. II. i. 55, 56.
Cp. ‘By his neesings a light doth shine,’ Job xli. 18; nook-shotten, shot into a corner, used in Cheshire of cheese put aside from the rest as inferior:
… but I will sell my dukedom
To buy a slobbery and a dirty farm
In that nook-shotten isle of Albion.
Hen. V, III. v. 12–14.
Nay-word, a by-word; orts, remnants, scraps, especially of food; peat, a term of endearment, a pet; pick-thank, a flatterer, a tale-bearer, a mischief-maker; plash, a puddle, a small pool; pink, adj. and vb. small, to make small, to contract, especially to contract the eyes: ‘Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne,’ A. and C. II. vii. 121; poach, potch, to poke, especially with the fingers, to thrust; pomewater, a large kind of apple; quat, a pimple; rack, flying clouds, thin broken clouds driven by the wind:
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride
With ugly rack on his celestial face.
Sonn. xxxiii. 5, 6.
Reechy, smoky, begrimed with smoke, dirty; reneague, renege, to refuse, deny; rivelled, wrinkled, puckered; shive, a slice of anything edible, especially of bread; skillet, a small metal vessel used for boiling liquids: ‘Let housewives make a skillet of my helm,’ Oth. I. ii. 273; sleeveless, useless, bootless, especially in the phrase a sleeveless errand, cp. Troil. and Cr. V. iv. 9; squinny, to squint, look askance; stover, winter fodder for cattle:
Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,
And flat meads thatch’d with stover, them to keep.
Temp. IV. i. 62, 63.
Tetchy, peevish, irritable; trash, a cord used in checking dogs, a long slender rope fastened to the collar of a young pointer or setter if headstrong and inclined to run in:
If this poor trash of Venice, whom I trash
For his quick hunting, stand the putting on,
I’ll have our Michael Cassio on the hip.
Oth. II. i. 312–14.
Trencher-man, a term applied to a person with a good, hearty appetite; urchin, a hedgehog; utis, noise, confusion: ‘By the mass, here will be old utis,’ 2 Hen. IV, II. iv. 22; yare, ready, prepared; yerk, to strike hard, to beat.
Shakespearian Phrases in the Dialects
Among interesting expressions of Shakespeare’s date still existing in the dialects are: to burn daylight, to light candles before they are wanted; figuratively, to waste time:
Mercutio. … Come, we burn daylight, ho!
Rom. Nay, that’s not so.
Mer. I mean, Sir, in delay
We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day.
Rom. and Jul. I. iv. 43–5.
Make a coil, Be in a taking
To make a coil, to make a stir, confusion, or fuss: ‘I am not worth this coil that’s made for me,’ King John, II. i. 165; come your ways, come here, Ham. I. iii. 135, Troil. and Cres. III. ii. 44; pass, condition, state, in phrases: ‘What, have his daughters brought him to this pass?’ Lear, III. iv. 65, ‘Till I be brought to such a silly pass,’ T. Shrew, V. ii. 124; to one’s head, to one’s face, e.g. I told him to his head that I wouldn’t have such goings on in my house any more (Sus.):
… he shall bring you
Before the duke, and to the head of Angelo
Accuse him home and home.
Meas. for Meas. IV. iii. 146–8.
To be helped up, used ironically: to be in a difficulty, e.g. What with the missis bad, and him out of work, they’re well helped up (War.). You’re prettily holp up, is a common expression of derision, cp.:
A man is well holp up that trusts to you;
I promised your presence and the chain;
But neither chain nor goldsmith came to me.
Com. of Errors, IV. i. 22–4.
To be in a taking (gen. colloq. use), a state of excitement, grief, or perplexity; a fit of petulance or temper, cp. ‘What a taking was he in when your husband asked who was in the basket,’ Mer. Wives, III. iii. 191; a hole in the coat, a flaw or blemish in character or conduct, cp. ‘If I find a hole in his coat, I will tell him my mind,’ Hen. V, III. vi. 87; to make the door, to shut or fasten the door: ‘Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement,’ A. Y. L. I. IV. i. 162; to stand one on, to be incumbent on, to be to one’s interest, cp.:
… For my state
Stands on me to defend, not to debate.
Lear, V. i. 68, 69.
A thing of nothing, a trifle, next to nothing, e.g. He bought a lot o’ taters for his cows, and got ’em for a thing o’ nothing (Chs.), cp.: Ham. The king is a thing— Guil. A thing, my lord? Ham. Of nothing, Ham. IV. ii. 30–32. Beside this exists also the parallel expression ‘a thing of naught’, in the dialects now, a thing of nowt: ‘You must say “paragon”: a paramour is, God bless us, a thing of naught,’ Mids. N. D. IV. ii. 14, cp. ‘They that war against thee shall be as nothing, and as a thing of nought,’ Isaiah xli. 12. Worth a Jew’s