Nigel Gatherer wrote:
David Kilpatrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[re mickle/muckle/pickle]
Nigel, I thought this was an error too, but see Yorkshire/Cumbrian etc.
Mickle means small...I don't think pickle got changed to mickle, I think
mickle has been in Scotland as long as it's been in the north of
England...
See? It's aye dangerous fir me to pretend I ken aboot somethin, 'cause
I'll be fun' oot eventually.
(I run to have a quick look in "The Concise Scots Dictionary"...)
Well there's only one entry for "mickle", and that says "see MUCKLE".
Under "muckle", every definition is to do with largeness, although they do
quote my saying, but with mickle, not pickle. My source for the "pickle"
version was a hugely knowledgable friend, now dead unfortunately, so I
can't shout at him. Instead I'll shout at the editors of The Concise...
Various dictionaries I've got, especially American ones, say the same - they make the
words identical. But that's not the usage I got from ordinary Yorkshire vernacular, and
it's not what people *think* is correct in the Borders even though they don't use the
'mickle' word at all, only the other one.
Our neighbours when I was growing up in Yorkshire were called Micklethwaite and said
their
name meant 'little lake'. But then again, the word had no currency at all on its own -
while 'muckle' is widely used for big in Yorks and N England generally.
David
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