“FOREIGN” ENGLISH.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 14726, 3 August 1921, Page 6

“FOREIGN” ENGLISH.

STEANGE WOEDS.

“Do you “make” or do you “mash” your tea? We “makei” ours at home, but I know some folks avlio “mash” it. The process is, of' course, the same under both terms. You just pour hot watei* on to tea-leaves, let the Avhole stand for a Avhile, and hope for the best.

“To mash” is here “to brew,” and so a good word to use. But to me it always 1 suggests the making of something thick and sticky, and, in connection with tea, is a “foreign” word from the north. When I store away anything tall in an upright position—say a bundle of bean-rods, or'a plank, or a pair of steps—l “lean” it against the wall. But I have been invited before now, Avhen returning a ladder after use, just “to teal it up” in the comer. To “teal a thing up" seems to be just the same as “leaning it to,” but I do not know the origin of the expression. The other day a man gave me some advice about the grass on a path between plots.

“If I were you,” he said, “I’d peel it off and lay it in the bottom of your trenches. It’s of no use leaving it where it is. It will only wrastle if you do.”

I knew the word. I had heard it often, though not of late. To Avrastle—l am not sure of the spelling—is to spread; weeds Such as chick-weed and sorrel that creep over or under the ground—all the things that have a lateral rather than an upward growth—are Avrastlers. And grass paths certainly do wrastle over the plots unless you keep the edges carefully trimmed. That man’s advice was good, -i

A friend of mine who had heard the word asked me if I knew from what part of the country it came. He said it certainly did not. belong to his own county of Surrey. All that I could tell him was that I had known it doAvn in''the west.

Do you know the word “pickid” 1 I tt was brought up to it, and a feAV of my nearest relatives seem to know it, but most folk, I find, receive it Avith a blank stare. It means looking Avan and sickly, and is possibly a form of “peaked,” in the sense of “pinched." “Well, you do look “pickid,” I have often heard, but only in my OAvn home. It is perhaps a Av&rd current only within the family.

“Nesh” is a word unknoAvn in some parts of England, although wellknown in others. If I Aver© to say to a West Countryman that I Avas “nesh” he would know that I meant that I felt chilly and shivery, but I should certainly not be understood in Eastern England. Literally the word means tender as a newly born babe. It was mad© by the Saxons out of the Latin, from the. word “nascere,” to be born.

In the south of England many a man who travels daily betAA r een his suburban or country home and the city would b© puzzled if asked what his “contract” cost him. His “sea-son-ticket” never suggests itself to him under the term “contract,” but to the hard-headed northern a “sea-son-ticket” is a “contract” and nothing else. He •will talk always of his “contract” Avith the railway.

In the south, again, we “look for” a thing. In the north 'they are more likely “to seek.” Many a time I have heard a North Countryman say, “What are you looking for 2” The northern “seek” has the fine strong ring of Biblical English about it. But the northern “soop” is hardly so strong as the southern “drink.”

So the Englishman constantly finds something “foreign” in hi 3 own tongue. Which tells him what a rich tongue it is—so rich that he cannot hope to know all of it. —i1.H.8. in the Daily Mail.