Tomorrow is National Dialect Day, and we've been digging around our archives (and asking some of our older colleagues) for their favourite Dorset words, some of which we've heard of and some of which we definitely haven't!

How many of these words do you recognise? And are there any other words or phrases we've missed off?

  • Annan? Say that again? A word you'd need if you were dunch.
  • Dunch: a bit deaf, hard of hearing
  • Joppety-joppety: nerves. From "jaup", a Dorset dialect word meaning the breaking of a wave, or to splash or spatter with water. According to Susie Dent's book How to Talk like a Local, joppety-joppety is the sound reduplicated to indicate spurts of panic.
  • Miff: a quarrel, a coolness between friends. The alternative tiff is the one that's most used today, but we rather like miff, which is of course where the phrase "I'm a bit miffed." comes from.
  • God Almighty's Cow: the ladybird. No, we don't know why either.
  • Homble: a duck
  • Horridge (or whorage): a house of bad characters
  • Slommock: a slatternly woman
  • Torrididdle: out of one's mind
  • Emmet: ant. The Cornish call their tourists emmets. The word used in the rest of the West Country, grockle, is believed to come from a comic strip which originated in the 1920s comic the Rover before moving to the Dandy. Jimmy and his Grockle was about a boy and his pet dragon. Research seems to suggest that the word grockle was adopted for summer visitors by workers at a Torquay hotel, where a scriptwriter picked it up for his film The System, from where it was transferred into more mainstream use. If you know better, let us know!
  • Ramshacklum: good for nothing
  • Twanketen: melancholy
  • Undercreepen: sly.
  • Wopsy: wasp. From the Dorset habit of transposing the "s" sound, so also ax for ask and claps for clasp.
  • Yop: to talk rapidly
  • Dewbit: first breakfast. Dorset dialect has more words for meals than hobbits do. Dewbit means the first meal of the day, although not breakfast, which is bigger and later.
  • Bit an' drop: bit of food, drop of drink. Not a meal. Just a Baggins style snack.
  • Nuncheon, cruncheon, nummit and crummit: four more words for meals. Dorset farm workers were said to have dewbit, breakfast, nuncheon, cruncheon, lunch, nammet, crammet and supper. But nammet - food eaten in the fields between meals, possibly from noon-meat - and nuncheon may well have been two words for the same thing (also cruncheon and crammet) so it's not as bad as it sounds.
  • Boris-noris: to go on recklessly without thought to risk or decency
  • Drawlatcheten: lazy. A drawlatchet is a person who walks slowly and lazily, so quite a good word to apply to your four-year-old when you'd like them to get a move on. Affectionately, of course.
  • Bibber: shiver
  • Airmouse: The bat.
  • Dumbledore: The bumblebee. J K Rowling chose the word for her Hogwarts headmaster because of Dumbledore's love of music: she imagined him walking around "humming to himself a lot".
  • Lippy: Wet and rainy, often stormy. So Harry's probably saying to Dumbledore: "It's a bit lippy out, sir, can't we apparate back to your study?" Or something.
  • Overclap: eg clouds overclosing the earth. So, "will it freeze tonight? Depends on the overclap."
  • Ballywrag: To scold or accuse in foul language.
  • Loplolly: A lazy, or idle person.
  • Gally: To scare. So you may also see a gally-crow in the fields of Dorset.
  • Zummerwold (summer-mould): Freckles on the face, brought out by the sun.