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I have moved this topic into the new dialect section.

Charon - vexed is something I have heard here in Stoke when I was younger but not so much nowadays. Not sure where I heard it so perhaps it was my Nan?

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Mel

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Floor---the dog shelf.

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.

What's a dog shelf?

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Maureen
If you can't fight, wear a big 'at

Dancers - the stairs. My nana used to talk about going up the dancers to bed.

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Maureen
If you can't fight, wear a big 'at

The floor I think Maureen. We've always called it the topshelf.

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Mel

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Dog shelf, where the dog lies---on the floor.

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.

Talking of parts of the house : 'I'll go to the foot of our stairs', meaning 'well I never', or, if that is still dialect, 'that's a surprise'.

Bet you have never heard this one : if when you were shuffling the cards you dropped them all, my mother said that was a 'Tom Fowt shuffle'. Maybe just a clumsy character somewhere back in her family !

I'm sure we all know 'gawmless', sometimes 'gormless', meaning stupid. I think Bennett describes an old large lamp post in the centre of Burnley with the word, I don't know why, though I guess lamp posts aren't usually intelligent...

'Atta goin on ?' Are you going to the match ?

Rex

I think it was called the gormless lamp because it was in a gormless place, but I'll check with himself when he gets in.

"A bigger liar ner Tom Pepper", meaning a seriously bad liar.. Never heard that one till I moved here. But who was Tom Pepper?

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Maureen
If you can't fight, wear a big 'at

He was a character in a book by Charles F Briggs called 'The Trippings of Tom Pepper'

“who, according to nautical tradition, was kicked out of hell for being a bigger liar than His Satanic Majesty

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Gloria

I'd be dangerous with a brain.

A bit disappointing that, Gloria. I always thought he was some rather colourful local character.

As for the gormless lamp, t'other alf, who got it from his father, says it was because "it were in a gormless shop". (Shop as in place). He says it was in the middle of the road at a junction and it kept getting knocked down. sometimes for sport.
I did wonder tho whether it might be because it wasn't very bright, like the saying "dim as a Toc H lamp".

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Maureen
If you can't fight, wear a big 'at

Wasn't it near to St Peters Church? I will consult the books - I'm sure it is mentioned in one of them.

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Mel

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Found it. Gawmless - a gas lamp erected in 1823 near to the Bull Inn. It was given the name because it stood in the middle of the road. It was lit by electricity in 1893.

(Info from 'Burnley a Pictorial History' by Brian Hall & Ken Spencer)

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Mel

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'A bad shop' just means generally 'a difficult situation'). 'A bad do'

Rex