Words We Use: variations on ‘whether’

The conjunction where, an early contracted form of ‘whether’ is still used in many of England’s shires, particularly in the south, from Kent, west to Dorset, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall. Thomas Hardy from Dorset wrote in Wessex Folk, published in Harper’s Magazine, April 1891: ‘Faith I didn’t think where ‘twas Midsummer or Michaelmas; I’d too much work to do.’ A Cornish song has the couplet ‘Let us see if the vine do flourish, Wheere the tender grape do appear or no.’ The form is as old as Chaucer’s time. In the Canterbury Tales he has, ‘For she…Ne reccheth never wher I sink or flete.’

I was surprised to read recently that the conjunction whereas, used for where, is on the verge of becoming obsolete in its last stronghold, Scotland. In Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, published in 1806 there is the line, ‘He rode till he came to the ladye ffaire whereas his ladye lyed.’

The conjunction whereby is alive and well in Scotland, Northumberland, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Linolnshire and East Anglia. It means, first of all, whereas; on

which account. The English Dialect Dictionary [EDD]has, from Nottinghamshire, ‘He would have waited for her, whereby she was so late he went home alone.’ ‘Whereby’ also means ‘so that.’ From Lincolnshire the EDD has, ‘Make your door whereby it will shut. I don’t want to get whereby no one will look at me. She’s gotten whereby she can hing clothes out hersen.’

It’s many years ago now since I heard an old man in Carne, Co. Wexford use the word wheresomever, in place of wherever. Phil Wall was in his early nineties. Speaking of his youth he said, ‘I couldn’t care less wheresomever I laid my head in them carefree days.’ Wheresomever is also known in Lancashire, and it has found its way to America. The EDD quotes Mather’s Idylls from Lancashire (1895): ‘Wheresomever I sleep to-morn’; and from America it quotes Johnston’s Middle Georgia (1897): ‘Scooting back to his home wheresomever it might be.’

Wherrit is a good dialect word still in use in Scotland, Lancaster, Suffolk, the Isle of Wight, Dorset and Devon. It means what a leatherick means to west Cork people: a clatter, blow, thump, a smart box on the ear. It is an old word. Kendall’s Flowers of Eppigrammes (1577) has: ‘And in a fume gave Furius a whirret on the eare.’ I note that William Barnes, the Dorset poet and lexicographer, has the word in his glossary of 1863. A Scottish friend gave me the word recently in Dungarvan. Origin? Imitative, I’d say.