The Yorkshire Historical Dictionary: A Glossary of Yorkshire Words, 1120-c.1900 [2 volume set]

This volume offers an unparalleled collection of words and phrases gleaned from Yorkshire’s archives. The language it contains tells the story of Yorkshire in the words of the people who experienced it, providing a powerful new look at the county’s intangible heritage and what it means to be from Yorkshire. The Dictionary uses a broad range of sources to widen the English lexicon, with new vocabulary for (among others) by-names and place-names; for agricultural and animal terms; and for specialist craft and industries. As well as new words such as fulture (a mixture of manure and bedding), working tree (a stand for hides to be worked upon), stonery (a place where stones could be quarried), and wand hagger (part of a wood set out for producing wands, or saplings, for baskets, hurdles, etc.), there are earlier references to established words that appear in the Oxford English Dictionary, such as necessary-house (privy, here from 1414 compared to 1609), orange (as a colour, here from 1504 compared to 1600) and oliver (a tilt hammer, used by early iron-workers, here from 1350, compared to 1846). The Dictionary also fills in in gaps in our understanding of the development of regional language, from borrowings from the Baltic and Low Countries to its decline from the Tudor period on.

This is the first time such a comprehensive glossary of regional words has been published. Its wide-ranging scope, underpinned with excellent scholarship, means this volume will be of interest not just to historians of Yorkshire, but to local historians across the country, as well as linguists and place-name and surname researchers.