"That's a great deal to make one word mean," Alice said in a thoughtful tone. "When I make a word do a lot of work like that," said Humpty Dumpty, "I always pay it extra."

Thursday, 23 July 2009

Dingles and dells

 
Here are some lovely words for certain country features and among my favourites are dingle and dell. Both mean a small wooded hollow. Like the word "dale", the word "dell" is derived from the Old English language dæl. The word dingle was used as long ago as 1240 but its origins are unknown, it is possibly a dialect word.

As the combination Dingle Dell the two words can be found as a house or cottage name quite often.
 
Posted by at
Labels: ,

1 comment:

  1. DawnTreader23 July 2009 at 09:35

    Dell I might have guessed but dingle was new to me. Well, I suppose I might have come across it in context. Seeing it without context though, I only recognize it as a surname in the British TV series Emmerdale! :)

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)