Can't touch this

[venta]

I just used (on Skype) the phrase "as subtle as a ten pound mell".

Then I thought. Hmm. Mell. Is that a real word? The guy I was talking to didn't query it. I suspect this means he's used to me and ignores every other sentence. Anyway.

I did a bit of light searching for the phrase, and came up with nothing. Wikipedia doesn't know what a mell is.

Dammit.

A bit of hammer-browsing later, I was wondering if (as a kid) I'd misheard "maul hammer". Which is a genuine thing and everything.

I was just about to post here and ask if anyone else used the word "mell" like that when I thought of googling just the phrase "mell hammer" (rather than the whole "subtle as a ...").

And there, galloping to the rescue, is the Northumbrian Language Society. Scroll down that page and you'll find (point 4 on their list) a little table of some selected Northumbrian words.

A mell, it says, is a hammer. Well now. I felt somewhat better.

And then somewhat worse when I read the rest, and thought what? You're telling me gadgy and dunsh and and hacky aren't just normal words? This is the story of my life...

And is using "tab" for "cigarette" really limited to Northumberland? I only learned last week that boody wasn't a real word when someone looked at me funny. This is also the story of my life.

Comments

[ebee.livejournal.com]

Like, but what's in the box today?!

[ebee.livejournal.com]

And yes that is me bringing my new fangled Facebook language here ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hadaway wi yon shite. We did canny here afore Facebook.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

Hadaway always makes me think of this.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Wow, blast from the past! I'd totally forgotten that song, though I remember noticing the name Haddaway at the time.

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I just looked him up on TFOAK -- apparently, while making his glorious music, he played semi-pro American football and sold carpets (possibly not at the same time).

Versatile chap.

[venta.livejournal.com]

You'll have to wait :) Box was here, box was yummy, smartphone with piccies remains at home.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Wait... how do people describe a minor car accident without access to the word 'dunsh'?

Also, hacky always reminds me of that rhyme about the bull.

"Ca' Hacky, ca' Hacky, ca' Hacky through the watter
Hacky is a cliver beast
but Hacky winnit wade the watter"

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well yes - if you don't dunsh things, what on earth do you do?

I don't know the rhyme.

One of the things I really run into trouble with is trying to read dialect written down. I spent ages wondering what the word "cliver" meant because I was rhyming it with "diver".

I've caught up now :)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Well, that's basically the whole thing - trying to coax a bull called Hacky to cross a ford - he's a good bull but he doesn't want to go in the water. My grandma used to sing it to me when I was little.

[sushidog.livejournal.com]

I think I would probably call it a ding; I'm not familiar with dunsh.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Words like 'ding' or worse, 'prang' just sound terribly effete to my Northern ears! Dunsh is so much more onomatopoaeic.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Prang always sounds very Hooray Henry to me. It's probably acceptable if you've just crashed your plane circa 1940, other than that, stop it.

(Edited, because I apparently don't know when WWII started...)

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Planes were crashed before WW2. Actually, rather a lot of them crashed after about five minutes until they got that wing concept sorted! [grin]

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes, crash rates were possibly even decreasing by the time the BoB happened :)

However, I do think of the word "prang" as being very much associated with the "Spits" and "Hurrys" of the early WWII RAF vocabulary.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I can rather see that ...

"Had a tangle with the Boche in my Hurry, and had a bit of prang."
"You've got no legs, Douglas ..."
"Well, no."

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on what you're driving, and what you've hit. 'ding' and 'prang' are the noise of a Morgan's limited metalwork being hit by a cricket ball, or colliding with a librarian's bicycle which has been poorly propped against the kerb and fallen over. 'dunsh' is the slow crushing sound made as the front of your car is slowly and gently stoved in by a barrel from a brewer's dray or by swerving too closely to a moving traction engine.

(And yes, I know I'm going to die now.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Die now?

My dear chap, I wouldn't dream of threatening you.

However, I do feel that the reckless disregard for human life you show by driving the LandCruiser without a sensible chap with a red flag walking in front is going to catch up with you sooner or later.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

the reckless disregard for human life you show by driving the LandCruiser without a sensible chap with a red flag walking in front is going to catch up with you sooner or later
You are certainly right, my dear lady - and it is something I should rectify at the earliest opportunity. Although I am not certain that anyone promenading in front of my car could be described as 'sensible'. Actually, this very weekend I shall be driving my car upon the stretch of road used for Britain's first motor-car race.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

Hacky is mucky, surely? And, on animals, how about gissies?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Not sure about gissies, actually! Would guess geese, but no real idea.

[venta.livejournal.com]

No, I know! Gissies is pigs?

You threw me with your talk of animals. But they're certainly gissies by the time they make it onto your plate!

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I'm unfamiliar with the rest of the words, but tab for cigarette would seem normal to me.

[venta.livejournal.com]

All the rest of the words? Even hacky?!

(Despite confusion about bulls upaheight in the comments, hacky is an adjective. Your mam would tell you off for coming with your clothes all hacky...)

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Indeed. She might be given to mention that you looked like the Wreck of the Hesperus, especially if your heid was all tatty like a hen's arse on a windy day.

[venta.livejournal.com]

What the hell is the Wreck of the Hesperus, anyway? Other than, obviously, a thing you look like on a bad morning.

Well, there's a thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wreck_of_the_Hesperus). I wonder whether I was being likened to the ship, the drowned daughter, or the horrified fisherman.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Poem by Longfellow. No idea why it's common parlance in the North East (and apparently Ireland too, from previous investigations).

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

And Liverpool -- cf George Harrison's song so named.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Sorry. I *did* follow Karen's follow-up, though.

[venta.livejournal.com]

No need to apologise! I was just surprised. Hacky is one of those words that I find it impossible to conceive anyone doesn't know/use!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Seconded, I've heard that and haven't spent any time in Northumbria.

[chrisvenus]

I'm with this. I didn't even have an inkling of most of the others and probably wouldn't have known most of them (except Pollis just looks like its the word Police with a different pronunciation transcribed to paper). Oh, and bonny looks scottish to me but I may have got it...

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with "mell", but think of it as an archaism rather than Northumbrian.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Often the same thing :) A few years back, I asked my housemate to drop the sneck as she came in. She stared at me blankly.

A visiting friend hoicked out my dictionary of historical slang, and politely informed me that "sneck" as a word went out with Shakespear.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

There's a beer called Snecklifter though!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yes! Sadly, neither of them knew it :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

I think sneck is still pretty current across much of the north. I've heard it in the Lake District a few times.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I've heard 'sneck' before - but it might have been from Karen, so probably doesn't count.

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

COME BACK NORTH STOP STOP HERE STOP

[pm215]

Since nobody else has quoted the OED yet I'll mention that it has an entry for 'mell' which it says is "Now Sc., Eng. regional (north.), and Irish English" and "Variant of maul n.".

[fractalgeek.livejournal.com]

Sneck has been used in comics to avoid obvious profanity
I've only heard "tab" used by Geordies, but it is common enough that I know it as a southerner

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

I'd heard 'tab' for 'fag' while I was a teenager - but that may have been from being in the cadets, I'm not sure ...

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Tab a purely north eastern thing? Not sure at all. But can't actually remember hearing it elsewhere now.