London: Heard of bobowler, baffies, bishybarnabee, tittermatorter? Well, these are some of the weirdest words used in Britain.
For the first time, the British Library is keeping track of the nation”s regional words and has developed a word bank of around 4,000 entries.
The words were submitted by visitors to the British Library in central London or to a series of events at provincial libraries as part of its Evolving English exhibition.
According to experts, many local dialects died off in recent decades, squeezed out by the increasing standardisation of the language thanks to population mobility as well as the influence of television and radio.
But they added that the sheer range of bizarre and impenetrable words submitted by the public shows there remains plenty of life in regional forms of speech, reports the Daily Mail.
While there is plenty of historical evidence for some phrases, others are more recent, such as the Grimsby term for chewing gum, ‘spoggy’.
Alongside the terms are entire phrases – for example, someone from Newark in Nottinghamshire might say ‘Man de don’t know what the buer is rockerin’.
That translates as ‘I don’t know what the woman is on about’, using ‘buer’ or ‘bewer’ for woman, and ‘rocker’, meaning to speak or understand.
The completed word bank will interest anyone from actors wanting to perfect regional roles to foreign call centre workers looking to understand local British dialects.
Jonnie Robinson, curator of sociolinguistics and education at the Library, said regional language retained plenty of vitality.
“Social and geographic mobility nowadays means that people draw on a variety of terms and their default term is likely the mainstream standard term,’ he said.
“But people can still draw on terms from their local dialects,” he added.
Some of Britain’s obscure words compiled by the library:
Baffies — slippers (east coast of Scotland)
Bishybarnabee — ladybird (Norfolk)
Bobowler — large moth (Birmingham)
Deff — to ignore, split up, pack in, avoid (Birmingham)
Dodderman — snail (Norfolk/Suffolk)
Gopping — unattractive (Manchester)
Guddle — to rummage about (Northumberland and parts of Scotland)
Gurtlush — the best (Bristol)
On the box — off sick from work (Black Country)
Ronking — smelly, disgusting (Black Country)
Tittermatorter — see-saw (Norfolk)
Tranklements — ornaments (Black Country)
Now, linguists will study their origins, how they relate to other words and how widely spread their use is. (ANI)
Design your own 3-D chocolate with new tech
London: Do you want to design your own chocolate? Well, a new technology will help you turn your imagination into reality.
A chocolate teapot has finally become a reality after scientists invented a technology that allows people to design their own 3D objects, which can be reproduced in chocolate.
Researchers hope an online retail business will host a website for users to upload their designs for 3D printing and delivery.
The University of Exeter in collaboration with Brunel University and software developer Delcam is leading the project. Using new digital technology the printer allows people to create their own designs on a computer and reproduce them physically in three-dimensional form in chocolate.
The research has presented many challenges. Chocolate is not an easy material to work with because it requires accurate heating and cooling cycles.
These variables then have to be integrated with the correct flow rates for the 3D printing process.
“What makes this technology special is that users will be able to design and make their own products,” the Daily Mail quoted research leader Dr Liang Hao as saying. (ANI)