A new volume of a historical dictionary revealing thousands of Yorkshire words which had been lost for centuries  launched on Yorkshire Day.

The publication of more than 4,000 terms, dating from 1100 to c.1750, marks a lifetime’s work by local historian, Dr George Redmonds who died in 2018.

Over a sixty-year career, Dr Redmonds collected and defined words found in the course of his archival research in Yorkshire. Some had never previously been recorded. Other words were already known, but found to be in much earlier use than historians had thought.

Dr Redmonds found a reference to ‘cricket’ in use in 1559 to mean foot-stool. And the dictionary contains a full explanation of the word pudding –  which meant entrails such as black pudding from 1556  – but has since evolved into having sweeter connotations.

Alexandra Medcalf said: “The Yorkshire Historical Dictionary is a fascinating record of Yorkshire’s past, to be enjoyed by everyone.

“It also makes a major contribution to the study of dialect vocabulary in Britain – and it is an important tool for anyone working on Yorkshire history.”

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