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Dear Neil et al My description of Outgang as a dialectal term is only following that which appears in the OED - "Now Sc. or north. dial" I appreciate that it is also a regional term - it obviously appears in more than one dialect - but as the introduction to the thesaurus states "Standard English is used wherever possible for preferred terms. However, where a regional or dialect term has no recognized equivalent, for example, FOGOU, then that term will be accepted as the preferred term". My argument, and indeed yours, is that "outgang" is a local/regional/dialectal term for a drove road. The rules of thesaurus construction are very clear on the inclusion of synonyms and in this instance we should only include it as a non-preferred term of trackway and/or drove road. Many of us would like regional terms included - I have a particular fondness for "jitty" - and indeed there is nothing stopping anyone from using locally preferred terms in their own systems, however for the national thesaurus we have to use those terms which are most commonly used. It was never my intention to start a dialectic discourse on dialects, but I feel that I have to state the case for standards and maintaining them. Otherwise we may as well just return to the world of free text and use google as our search engines. Which come to think of it would make my job a whole lot easier ;-) Phil -----Original Message----- From: Neil Campling [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: 19 March 2003 09:24 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: FW: terms for the thesaurus of monument types Dear All, "Outgang" is more than dialectical. It is a regional term up here in the north, used for drove ways leading from DMVs to grazing areas amongst other things. It can be found regularly in the regional archaeological and historic landscape literature. There is also a complimentary term "ingang" meaning entrance-way. The two terms have a history dating back to the Anglian period. I think the Thesaurus should not relegate regional terms to the status of "dialectical". They are, afterall, what makes the world an interesting and diverse place. Cheers,