My brother gave me Belinda Bauer’s new crime novel Snap, set in the southwest of England (Tiverton and nearby parts of Devon, to be precise), and at one point a policeman is investigating a burglary — a family has come back from vacation to find their house not only burgled but despoiled — and the irate paterfamilias is complaining about insurance companies: “Always looking for ways not to pay you.” The scene continues:
‘Well, you’ve done the right thing leaving everything as it was for us to see, Mr Passmore. I’ll be giving you a crime reference number for the insurance claim.’
‘Thanks.’ Passmore nodded, slightly less maroon.
I was taken aback by this unexpected use of maroon, which means a number of things but not, as far as I can tell, anything like ‘upset.’ Is this a slang/dialect UK thing?
Also, the Wikipedia article on Tiverton (linked above) refers to its “medieval town leat”; this dialect word for an artificial watercourse or aqueduct was new to me, and I find it pleasing. Wikipedia sez:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, leat is cognate with let in the sense of “allow to pass through”. Other names for the same thing include fleam (probably a leat supplying water to a mill that did not have a millpool). In parts of northern England, for example around Sheffield, the equivalent word is goit. In southern England, a leat used to supply water for water-meadow irrigation is often called a carrier, top carrier, or main.
I’m not sure which I like better, fleam, goit, or leat.
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