Suffolk Words and Phrases

Moor's "Suffolk Words and Phrases" is a quarry of material, valuable to the agricultural historian and economist as much or more than the dialectologist. Explanations, definitions, anecdotes, descriptions of use, contrasting words--these and more enliven Moor's shrewd observations in his long, discursive entries. Moor's fascination for his 'native' dialect may have been stimulated by his long residence in India. Moor's book lacks a phonetic alphabet, but gives representations in normal spelling to convey as much about pronunciation as possible. No one who has been to rural Suffolk today would have any difficulty in understanding the words and how they should sound. Moor was recording words which had undergone little change in the lives of the generations of the young and old he listened to. Some of the words have survived into the twentieth century, while others, like the objects they describe, have become museum pieces.