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Take that, eskimos!

mud

The Sussex dialect — like regional dialects everywhere — is disappearing. Radio and television, migration of peoples. Whatevs. But certain aspects of local speech are just too gosh-darned necessary to be lost. I give you, the 31 Sussexian words for mud:

cledgy – earth sticking to the spade when digging is cledgy.
clodgy – muddy and wet like a field path after heavy rain.
gawm (gorm garm) – especially sticky foul smelling mud.
gormed up – stuck seized with mud.
gubber – black anaerobic mud of rotting organic matter. (We have a lot of this — unrecycled prehistoric forest).
ike (hike) – a mess or area of mud.
paunch – to break up fairly coherent mud “those cows they do paunch about the mud so”.
poach – to tread the muddy ground into holes as do cattle.
pug – a kind of loam – particularly the sticky yellow Wealden clay.
slab – thickest mud.
slabby – sticky, slippery, greasy, dirty mud.
sleech – mud or river sediment used for manure – especially from the River Rother.
slob – thick mud.
slobby – a sate of muddiness where it is difficult to extricate the boot at each step “the way here was very wearisome through dirt and slobbiness”.
slough (slogh) – a muddy hole.
slub – thick mud – used as slush is elsewhere.
slubby – dirty with stiff and extremely tenacious mud.
slub-up – to make stiff with mud, he come ome all of a slub.
slubber – to slip in mud.
slurry – diluted mud distinct from slub, saturated with so much water that it cannot drain, churned up into a cream or paste with water.
slommocky – made dirty with mud.
smeery – wet and sticky surface mud, not clodgy or slobby.
spannel – to make dirty with mud as would a spaniel on a floor.
stabble – to walk thick mud into the house.
stoach – to trample ground, like cattle, also the silty mud at Rye Harbour.
stoachy – dirty, mildly muddy.
stoached – an entry to a field in bad weather is stoached (and poached).
stodge – thick puddingy mud.
stug – watery mud.
stuggy – filled with watery mud.
swank – a bog.

They tell us the rain and warm is about to give way to cold and dry. We shall see, we shall see. In the meantime, I’ve got enough new vocabulary words to make conversation. Good weekend!


January 8, 2016 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 20