button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes 1778/1810

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3rd edn addenda, page 298:-
of the counties of Westmorland and Cumberland, where the common speech at this day (besides many obsolete words used by our elder poets, from Chaucer down to Spencer, &c.) contains several unnoticed roots and elements of derivation. These dialects are much different in many words from the broad Lancashire: And were they collected and digested in some such manner as the specimens of an English-British Dictionary given us by the ingenious and learned author of the History of Manchester, and his completed, I am satisfied these works, with the assistance of the Welch, ancient Cornish, Islandic, and the remains of other Gothic and Teutonic languages, would throw an unexpected light on the bases, structure, and analogies of the English tongue.
As a slight specimen of this, I will put down the derivation of a few words, of which we find little in our dictionaries, or little satisfactory. Many more might be given from a cursory recollection, but we must not forget the chief interest of this volume, and that Swift's discourse on the antiquity of the English tongue is perhaps in more hands than may know the due limits of its ridicule. And should these etymologies appear to some more whimsical than just, it should be re-
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