A Dictionary Of The Sussex Dialect - online book

A Collection Of Provincialisms In Use In The County Of Sussex.

	ADDENDA.
	-----------*■------------ While my Dictionary was in the press, I received the following words from the Rev. A. F. Kirkpatrick, Trinity College, Cambridge, and Edgar Sharpe, Esq., Carshalton. They came too late to be placed in their alphabetical order, but were too interesting to be omitted.
	Ability. A word occuring in old account books for an assess­ment rate, now probably obsolete. Ash-cloth, m. Before the use of soda was understood, the washerwomen used to soften the water by straining it through a coarse cloth, which was fastened over the top of the wash tub and first covered with marsh-mallow leaves, and then with a layer of wood ashes. Bail, w. The handle of a bucket, pail or kettle. Bats. Logs of wood for burning. Billus, w. To beat; to flog. Black-grass, e. Alopecurus agrestis. Blobtongue, w. [Blabbre, Danish, to gabble.] A tell-tale. (See Blobtit.) Blue-bottle, m. The wild hyacinth. Hyacinthus non scriptus. Bodge, w. A water cask on wheels. (See Budge.) Bond. [Bond, Ang. Sax.] A band, as a hay-bond, bonds for fastening up the sheaves of corn, &c. Book. A word used in old parochial accounts for a rate, as "a 2S. 6d. book produces £500 in Horsted Keynes." Break. A cultivator used among potatoes and hops. (See Idget.) Broke, w. A large quantity of timber.