Buckinghamshire Vocabulary

| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y

Introduction
In 1897 Alfred Heneage Cocks, M.A., realised that with the influx of people from London etc. to Buckinghamshire, that local words and phrases were fast becoming lost. He decided, as a result, to publish an article in "Records of Buckinghamshire" (the publication of the Buckinghamshire Archaelogical Society) of Bucks words and their meanings. This first article was based on the words he was familiar with, through living in Great Marlow, and appeared on pages 61-70, volume 7, 1897 of this publication. As a result of this, he was contacted by a number of people throughout Buckinghamshire, who provided him with many more examples of local words and he consequently published, in "Records of Buckinghamshire", two, far more extensive lists of words. These appeared on pages 284-303, volume 7, 1897 and pages 124-172, volume 9, 1904-1909.

In the following pages I have amalgamated the three sets of words to produce a single alphabetical list. The explanation for each word is as far as possible a quote from the original publications (slight alterations have had to be made where additional meanings for words have been given over the three articles, and I have excluded the notes which state who provided the words for inclusion).

Frequently in the explanations are references to "Halliwell", this is referring to a book first published in 1850, by James Orchard Halliwell, entitled "Dictionary of Archaic Words". Alfred Heneage Cocks often compares the local meanings of words, with those to be found in this book. There are also references to Mr. Gurney, who provided a large collection of the words used in the third of the publications (Mr. Gurney lived in Wing).The abbreviation "A.S.", which is to be found means Anglo Saxon.

Click on the alphabetical links at the top of this page to view the words