PATTERSON ON NEWFOUNDLAND DIALECT. Ixv 
thing very indecent and improper. Thus, a violent attack on a woman’s 
chastity is called very ridiculous behavior, and an ill-conducted house 
may be described as a very ridiculous one. 
Rind as a noun is invariably used to denote the bark of a tree and 
as a verb to strip it off. The word bark on the other hand is only used 
as a noun to denote the tan which the fisherman applies to his net and 
sails, and as a verb to denote such an application of it. Thus he will 
say, ‘‘I have been getting some juniper or black spruce rind to make 
tan bark,” or “I have been barking my net or sails,” meaning that he 
has been applying the tannin extract to them. 
One of the most singular peculiarities however of the dialect of New- 
foundland, is the use of the word 700m to denote the whole premises of 
a merchant, planter, or fisherman. On the principal harbors, the land 
on the shore was granted in small plots measuring so many yards in 
front, and running back two or three hundred yards with a lane between 
Each of these allotments was called a voom, and according to the way in 
which it was employed, was known as a merchant’s room, a planter’s 
room, or a fisherman’s room. Thus we will hear of Mr. M’s. upper room, 
his lower room or his beach room, or we have Mr. H.’s room, the place 
where he does business, at Labrador. One of these places descending 
from father to son will be called a family room. 
Shall, probably the same as shell, but we find it as shale used by 
older writers. Johnson defines it as ‘‘a husk, the case of seeds in 
siliquous plants,” quoting Shakspeare’s line “leaving them but the 
shales and husks of men,” and Halliwell gives it as a noun meaning “a 
husk ” and as a verb “to husk or shell as peas.” 
The word skipper is in universal use and so commonly applied, as 
almost to have lost its original meaning of master of a small vessel. It 
is used toward every person whom one wishes to address with respect, 
and is almost as common as “Mr.” is elsewhere. Generally the 
christian name is used after it, as skipper Jan, skipper Kish. In lke 
manner the word wncle is used without regard to relationship. In a 
community every respectable man of say sixty years of age will be so 
called by all the other people in it. 
Smoochin, hair-oil, or pomade. A young man from abroad, com- 
mencing as clerk in an establishment at one of the outposts, was puzzled 
by an order for a “pen’orth of smoochin.” The verb smooch is also 
used as equivalent to smutch, to blacken or defile. We may hear such 
