At 1999-04-27 10:36:07, R I Caddel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
# On Mon, 26 Apr 1999, Alan Halsey wrote:
#
# > Somewhere I read that woodlice have more vernacular names than any other
# > creature; a curious fact if true but it wasn't backed up with examples.
# > My grandmother called them 'grampha-gravies' or just 'gramphas' [sp.?]
# > which has some resemblance to the wonderful 'grammarsow' used by
# > W.S.Graham. Cornish or Scottish in either case? Other names, anyone?
#
# I can offer only "peabug" (Kent) "wood'us" (Yorkshire; turns out to be a
# contraction, rather than "woodwose" as I'd hoped at first) and
# "pig-of-the-woods" (a literal translation from the Welsh; from a colleague
# from South Wales). I'd've thought ladybirds would be better contenders for
# multiple namings, but I'm ready to be convinced.
As a child in North Devon, I didn't know wood-lice were called, er, wood-lice:
we knew them only as "chuggy-pigs".
Roger
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