Seen any Quists or Yekkels recently?

If I told you I would fettle your yatt, glat your hedge, rise your termits and ted your conty tumps would you know whether to be pleased or alarmed? These are all Herefordshire dialect words as told to the village history project in 1966. Are any of them still in use? Do you know other dialect words peculiar to this county? Here’s a selection of dialect words and their definitions:

• Bank piece – A steep field

• Bolting – A bundle of straw

• Boont – to butt or bunt

• Bytack – Small holding included in the boundary of another farm

• Cleck – a gossip

• Clemmed – Hungry

• Colert – Owl

• Conty tump – Mole hill

• Cruddled – curdled

• Fetttle – to repair

• Fitchuck – Polecat

• Fizzles – Thistles

• Flummery – oatmeal boiled down to a porridge-like substance

• Glat – a hole; to glat - to fill a hole in a hedge

• Lease – to glean

• Lessow – Pasture

• Orl – Alder tree

• Piece – field

• Pitch – Steep stretch of road

• Plock – small field or paddock

• Quist – Wood pigeon

• Rise – to get or harvest as in “rise potatoes”

• Skith – Thin covering of snow

• Snappers – Stitchwort

• Soud – Light shower

• Spottle – to splash

• Stean – Stone vessel

• Ted – to scatter

• Termit – turnip

• Thrape – to thrash

• Threshal – Flail

• Tump – a hillock or mound

• Urchin – Hedgehog

• Wainhouse – Cart Shed

• White faces – Hereford Cattle

• Whithy – willow

• Yatt – Gate

• Yekkel – Woodpecker