Wordwizard

Personally, I'm a "whet" man, and I think you are right, you want to sharpen your whistle, not drown it.

Thank you Ross, your post answered a lot of questions that were in my mind. I can well understand the sense of identity that tribal names can give. Just let anyone try calling me English if you want to see a portly middle-aged gentleman blow his top.

Regrettably, some of us can only let hair down figuratively.
But I can still remember the Sixties; I was a musician then and could really let my hair down.
(Exit stage left, sobbing).

So children don't have to play "Bovine persons and Native Americans" instead of "Cowboys and Indians" then?

One of my friends agrees with Julius, but it would seem that the term is particularly Kentish, and has not spread very far over the borders, it's a good word to learn, Thanks.

You may be interested to know that I once saw a bloke from Sardinia playing bagless pipes. He stuck a couple of what looked like sticks into his mouth, played tunes on a chanter and managed the drones with recirculatory breathing. It was quite something to see, and hear.

Hans Joerg has raised an interesting point in one sentence, "As for Native Americans - in August 2004 I attended the Pow-Wow of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians". I understand the PC term “Native Americans”, but on this side of the Pond it would appear that Columbus' mistake is...

Am I the only one who has never heard of the word “boorcole”? Broccoli I knew even before Cubby of that name and his version of James Bond.

This is interesting in the extreme as I have never heard of its use apart from a character in “Dad’s Army” (a long running television comedy about the Home Guard during the last War) who could be a bit dim. I can say with certainty that the expression has never hit my part of Wales. I’ll check with ...

If you were in the UK it would be a Sellotape pine, which doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

When I was a boy I was always told that apart from whisky, beef and eggs (a boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and breadcrumbs before deep frying) the word Scotch should never be used.

Erik, Now that you mention it, yes, it was a phrase I had completely forgotten about. I do remember "three ha'pence" meaning a penny and a half, or a penny h'penny. Fruit Salads were the same price as Blackjacks, so you could mix them up and get two of each. And, may the saints help me, I actually r...

“He scoffed down his grub” is in everyday use, but apart from the thing you put around your neck the only other uses of scarf that I know are berthing one ship against another, or joining timber. I have never come across it as a variant of scoff. Is it common elsewhere?

The use of scotch as a noun is also quite common, it being the wedge or whatever you use to scotch a wheel. I was a bit puzzled by the use of the word “halfpence” in The Parent's Assistant. The UK turned to decimal currency in 1971, and the last (old) half penny had been minted in 1967, up until its...

Sort of Edwin, but there is more to it than that, I think you have to hear the usage. If I wanted to say to a child, "Don't go near that thing on the floor, it is dirty", "Ach-y-fe!" more than does the job. Also if Dai came home to his wife drunk, her neighbour would mutter "Ach-y-fe" to her friend ...