Twitten
The Word on the Street
twitten
TWIT-un
noun
A narrow path between two walls or hedges
We here at Word of the Week Towers have flirted with dialect terms before. We have encountered the Northern term ‘mither’, which I mispronounced in a meeting once and was subsequently laughed at by a colleague. Much earlier we covered the Devon term ‘grockle’, a derogatory term for tourists.
Today we return to the south coast with the Sussex dialect term ‘twitten’. ‘Twitten’ is Sussex’s entry into the ‘what do you call a narrow alley’ competition. Northerners have ‘snickets’ and ‘ginnels’, Midlanders have ‘twitchens’, Geordies (among other places) have ‘chares’. Other entries from around the country include ‘drang’, ‘gullet’, ‘smoot’, ‘tewer’ and ‘wynd’. Next week, bread rolls!
The OED believes the word is a variant of ‘twitchen’ which is much older. The Old English word ‘twicen’ referred to a place where two roads met, and is related to the much more common word ‘twice’. Ultimately the root appears to be Germanic in nature, and modern German (particularly in the region around Hamburg) uses the word ‘Twiete’ to refer to a narrow lane.
I was not aware that the Sussex dialect was as rich as it was, but after a little lexicological digging I stumbled upon A Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect (1875) by the vicar WD Parish (nominative determinism, anyone?). Other interesting words I found include: ‘stodge’ (a fuss), ‘snudge’ (to walk with a stoop looking on the ground as if in deep thought), ‘lapsy’ (lazy, slow, indifferent), ‘last’ (a collection of ten thousand herrings) and ‘nunting’ (awkward looking).
So, the next time you’re wandering the twittens of Brighton and see a nunting and lapsy character snudging down the street, don’t get in a stodge; they could well be trying to figure out what to do with their last of herrings.