venta

Every so often, I use a word which makes everyone go "eh?". Often this is because I'm using regional words in the wrong region (and, in fairness, sometimes it's because I'm just indulging my taste for obscure words). But recently, I apologised for saying "playing hooky" (playing truant), and was told that this was in fact (a) well-known and (b) American. So I'm wondering... how many of the words I often avoid really are obscure northenisms. Are they in fact well known? Are they not actually northern, but instead, perhaps, words that were common when I was little/are common among kids but not grown ups, or something completely different?

So, what I want to know is, for the following words, would you know what I meant if I used them? Would you be able to work it out ? Would you use them yourself ? Do you know whence they come ? I'm not particularly interested in whether they're in dictionaries/googlable etc, what I'm after is a measure of well-known-ness. Please comment, even if only to say "I have no idea what you're talking about, you freak!"

And as a side-issue - I'd always thought "minging" or "minger" were definitely on the list of northern words, but they seem to have become pretty widespread relatively recently. Any suggestions?