55 long-lost Herefordshire sayings and words

THERE'S a language that's almost disappeared from this fair county - words and phrases you no longer hear.
So don't get all big-sorted about talking proper like - this isn't just squit, it's how some folks used to talk.

Every heard of a spadger? Or have you chawled on something recently, or do you suffer from screwmatics? Find out what these and other words and phrases mean in this lovingly compiled list - the work of Hereford Times old boy Tony Boyce . He didn't arrive in the county until recently...well, 1970, but he remembers the following words and phrases being used in various parts of Herefordshire, and some parts of Radnorshire.

Most are connected to the region's agricultural roots.

1. Bait: farm worker’s lunch or elevenses

2. Banky:  sloping ground, thus banky piece is a sloping field

3. Beethy: soft, limp or shrivelled

4. Big-sorted: stuck-up

5. Squit: nonsense, as in talking a right load of squitter

6. Screwmatics: rheumatism

7. Sniving:  swarming

8. Spadger: sparrow

9. Boughten: something not home-made, as in boughten cake

10. By-tack: smallholding attached to a farm

11. Chitlings: pigs’ entrails

12. Chawl:  chew (on chitlings, no doubt)

13. Cooch: crouch down 

14. Crowsty: bad-tempered

15. Daddicky: rotten

16. Thripples:  rack on a farm waggon (to keep hay bales in place, for instance)

17. Oolert: owlet

18. Double-dwelling: semi-detached cottages

19. Glat: hole in a hedge

20. Gull: gosling

21. Galleenie: guinea fowl

22. Jern: keen

23. Market piert: to be merry after the excitement of a market day drink or three

24. Lungeous: unmanageable

25. Moithered: muddled, confused or perplexed

26. Puther: to be all of a puther is to be hot and bothered

27. Nesh: feeling cold in a delicate sense

28. Panking pole: pole with a hook to shake apples from trees in an orchard

29. Plock: plot of ground, usually a small field

30. Piece:  field

31. Schlem:  take sneakingly, generally as regards a hungry animal

32. Scrat: scratch

33. Tump: heap of anything or small, round hill

34. Muck-sweat: much perspiration, usually produced by considerable exertion

35. Tush: drag or push along with difficulty

36. Bannut: walnut

37. Mizzle: light drizzle

38. Blackthorn winter: Very cold spell right at the end of winter

39. Jubilous: dubious

40. Urchin: hedgehog

41. Ardistraw: shrew

42. Oont: mole, hence oonty tump

43. Starving: as in starve (perishing cold)

44. Quist: wood pigeon or old codger, as in funny old quist

45. Bagging hook: implement for cutting hedges or thistles

46. Pleach: the art of laying a hedge

47. Cratch: farm rack or manger for hay

48. Frail: rush basket or workman’s tool bag

49. Jasper: wasp

50. Pitch: hill, usually in relation to a road

51. Pikel: pitchfork

52. Nisgal: youngest and/or weakest of a litter

53. Chats: small sticks, usually for kindling

54. Quank: subdue

55. Dishabels: women’s working clothes (from Norman French deshabille, meaning in disorder)