Today’s word, snicket [‘snɪkɪt], is a narrow passage between buildings, walls or fences in some parts of northern England. It’s origins are shrouded in mystery.

There are quite a few other words for such passages, including: gennel/ginnel/jennel [‘dʒɛnəl, ‘dʒɪnəl, ‘gɪnəl], vennel, bunnyrun, close, wynd, jitty, alley, alleyway, passage, passageway, entry, lane, laneway, twitten and twitchel.

Do you have any others?

Source: languagehat

I’m listening to Fry’s English Delight while writing this and just discovered that traffic lights are called robot in South Africa.

The word snig came up in conversation with a friend who came to fix some of my doors last week. They weren’t closing properly and he sawed and planed bits of them. We found that the catch doesn’t work in one of them, but the lock, a small metal slidding one, does. My friend told me that such locks are called snigs, a word I hadn’t heard before and which I can’t find in any of the dictionaries I’ve checked. Maybe it’s a dialect word.

A similar word that is perhaps related is sneg, which is what the window fitters called the metal protrusions that slide out to lock the windows in place.

Have any of you heard of either of these words?

Do you have other words for these kinds of locks?

Last week I looked at quite a few paint colours, trying to decide which ones to use in my house, and found the names given to the different colours interesting.

As there are so many different colours, paint manufacturers use various whys to describe them.

Whites, for example, come in many shades, including:

• Pure Brilliant White, Strong White, All White, Great White, Just White, Aged White, Stone White, Milk White, Cream White, House White, Lime White, Off-White, and so on

Some paints have more imaginative names, such as:

• Whites: Tallow, String, Slipper Satin, Cupcake, Piglet, Mittens, Straw, Seagull, Fresh Air and Cupboard Love
• Pinks and Reds: Tutu, Lucy’s Scarf, Pink-a-boo and Riding Hood
• Oranges, Yellows and Browns: Flower Pot, Humpty Dumpty, Freckle, Cocoa Pod and Muddy Boots
• Blues and Greens: Polka Dot, Milk Jug, Teacup, Bandstand, Whisper of Dramatic, Urban Obsession and Cricket

What I’ve found is that the same name might be used from different colours. For example, straw is a creamy colour from one paint company, and an orangey-brown colour from another.

I’ve chosen a colour called warm blue for my bedroom, water, a lighter blue, for my music room (the spare bedroom), and buttermilk, a lightish yellow, for my bathroom. The rest of the house is painted magnolia, a kind of creamy-white colour.

Do paint colours have interesting names in other languages?

I learnt a new word from the radio this morning – fascinator. They were talking about hats and somebody mentions the fascinator, something I hadn’t heard of before.

A fascinator or facinator hat is: “a small headpiece usually mounted on a base, comb or headband worn jauntily to the front or side incorporating a combination of feathers, flowers, coils, curls and other trimmings.” [Source]

Apparently the fascintor was originally a fine, lacy head covering made of wool or lace and like a shawl. It went out of fashion in the 1970s, but has made a come-back recently in a different form. They are almost exclusively worn by women, especially to special occasions like weddings and big race meetings such as Ascot. [Source]