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Contributions towards x Wiltshire Glossary. 
By G. E. Darrnett and the Rev. E. H. Gopparp. 
7. al 
'HE following pages make no claim to be considered as 
containing an exhaustive glossary of our Wiltshire speech. 
All ‘that has been attempted is to record such words and phrases as 
we ourselves are acquainted with, or have chanced upon in the course 
of our reading, and at the same time to bring together in a concise 
form all others that may have been noted for Wilts in previously- 
printed glossaries. 
Whether this preliminary word-list will ever be carried on to 
completion must remain an open question for the present, but we 
would mention that we shall be very glad to receive any additions 
or suggestions from those interested in the subject. Even if we do 
not use them ourselves, they may prove of value to the English 
Dialect Society, towards whose rough material for their projected 
English Dialect Dictionary most of the original portion of this list 
has been contributed by us during the past few years. The use of 
dialect would appear gradually to be dying out now in the county, 
thanks, perhaps, to the spread of education, which too often renders 
the rustic half ashamed of his native tongue. Good old English as 
at base it is,—for many a word or phrase used daily and hourly by 
the Wiltshire labourer has come down almost unchanged, even as 
regards pronunciation, from his Anglo-Saxon forefathers,—it is not 
good enough for him now. One here, and another there, will have 
been up to town, only to come back with a stock of slany phrases 
and misplaced aspirates, and a large and liberal contempt for the 
old speech and the old ways. The natural result is that every year 
is likely to add to the difficulty of collecting, and if it is not done 
now the task may soon become a hopeless one. 
The chief existing sources of information are as follows :— (1) 
the glossary of agricultural terms in Davis’s General View of the 
Agriculture of Wilts, 1811; reprinted in the Archeological Review, 
