Back then all these roadside drainage channels - for that's what a Groop is - were dug by hand. Now they are done in quarter the time by a tractor with a small digger shovel. They've all recently been dug out where I was walking the other day.
I thought it was a word the blokes who dug them had made up and it certainly doesn't appear in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary but it is in my little book of Suffolk words.
I've written about Suffolk dialect once before on this blog HERE, and on the old blog too a long time ago when I found people didn't 'get' the ironic sense of humour Suffolk people often use and our way of using language not quite as intended.
I wrote this
So a "bit windy" means blowing a gale and if someone asked me how many people were at a a big event and I said "quite a few". That means lots, even hundreds!
We use the word 'stuff' too much. For instance we would say I got some stuff from the doctor, instead of medicine.
If I said to two people " have a good Christmas together" it wouldn't mean "have a good Christmas TOGETHER" but "have a good Christmas both of you".
The word " daft" doesn't really mean stupid but is just slightly silly or even a term of endearment!
"Funny" doesn't always mean hilarious or even slightly amusing and "Owd" (old) doesn't necessarily refer to age. We say "Thus a funny owd day today int'it?" ( it is a funny old day today isn't it?) Which means that the weather is a bit odd or odd things have happened.
We say "Ours" or "mine" to mean our home and "yours" is your home.
We say "shew" instead of showed. The word "that " often replaces "it" and if we say " clever" it probably has nothing to do with intelligence. So "he in't too clever" means he is at deaths door!
We're proud to be a bit odd over here in East Anglia!
What's a 'groop' called in your part of the world?
Back Tomorrow
Sue
er - just 'ditch', I think.
ReplyDeletexx
No Essex name then?
DeleteThe groop, or grup, is the small channel from road or lane to ditch, Joy.
DeleteThe thing you get your wheel in cos you couldn't see it when you pull off the road when there's a lorry coming.
DeleteWe call them grups, pronounced grups. It is a normal everyday word. They were best cleaned out by shovel because they were cleared properly to the ditch. Now done mechanically they are not done so well.
ReplyDeleteNearly the same, allowing for accent.
DeleteIt was a very boring job for Col back in the day
I have now read the entire post, I didn't to start with. Norfolk humour gets me into loads of trouble on blogs. People just don't understand. Irony it is I suppose but it sounds very posh way to describe it!
ReplyDeleteMany of these expressions are also in common use in Lancashire! Though I had never heard of a 'groop'.
ReplyDeleteA series of groops (or grups) appeared along the road near us recently. Its nice to be able to put a word to them.
ReplyDeleteWhen I move to Norfolk, I'm looking forward to coming over for a mardle.(chat) Groop is an ancient word, found all over Europe - Scots gruip, Dutch groep, Swedish grop. All meaning ditch or land drain.
ReplyDeleteNever heard of that, I have always called them land drains.
ReplyDeleteLand drains are the perforated pipes that go under the ground in the fields to drain them. They are not seen. The grups are short channels through the bank to the ditch to drain surface water. I use the word grup here because I note your profile says you are in Norfolk.
DeleteBut not Norfolk born or bred. I called them that when we came here decades ago as that was what I heard people calling them, who also may not be Norfolk either. I call the pipes in the fields land drains.
DeleteYes, I assumed not Norfolk born and bred but used grup as you live here.
DeleteMost of those phrases are common in Warwickshire and our sense of humour is so dry you could wipe your hands on it.
ReplyDeleteComing from West Yorkshire I knew and understood the explanations you gave for all those sayings, except for 'groop'. Looking in my Yorkshireman's Dictionary 'groop' means drain in cow-stall, which is similar to your ditch. Obviously not a word that has stood the test of time.
ReplyDeleteHave you heard of 'starving' for being cold, or is that an old Yorkshire expression?
oddly enough the same! My mum can be very Suffolk-y and she's proud of it. She often uses the word 'ewe' as in someone could 'ewe' her money or a favour or whatever. I'll say 'owed, mother' but I get told it's her Suffolk way and that's that. Shew is a favourite word of hers, but one I've never used in that way. She's never called the Co Op that, it's the coo-op to her.
ReplyDeleteAnd we never went into town, it was always 'goin' up the town'.
I knew a bloke who pronounced folk as 'fook' that was always interesting to hear!
Living in Haughley we went down to Stowmarket but up to Ipswich, can't remember how we got to Bury!
DeleteNever heards of groops. Ours were dykes drains and ditches.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest Sue I have no idea. We were talking the other day about when we were young and every village had a roadman who took care of making little drainage channels off the road and into fields and dykes - now nobody does it round here and the water gathers along the road and then it floods.
ReplyDeleteCol started work with the council not that many years after the time of each village having their own roadman. He worked in a gang of 3 and apart from groops they did things like weed killing verges ( no protective clothing) and getting weeds off footpaths.
DeleteMy elderly neighbours here (Cambridgeshire) just call them road gullies. My parents, who live in Norfolk, call them culverts.
ReplyDeleteIn Suffolk Culverts take water under the road - usually through a big pipe. The tanker thing that went round villages sucking water out of the road drains was called a Gully Sucker!
DeleteI think some of your readers need to come and do a site visit with us Sue so we can show them exactly what a grup or a groop is!
ReplyDeleteWhere I grew up, we had shuchs rather than ditches. I have only ever heard it spoken and therefore have no idea how to spell it really. It is said with a good "ch" at the end, like lochs not locks.
ReplyDeleteI've been googling various spellings of this word and google likes sheuch best
DeleteI've no idea what a drainage ditch is called but I do love to hear of these local words. It would be so sad if these dialects died out. Growing up in Essex with a Scots dad and a mum from London we did have a lot of strange words in our family.
ReplyDeleteGroop is a new word to me. I know what it is but guess I never thought about what it was called. You taught me something new! Some of your Suffolk dialect we use here. We use "a bit windy", "quite a few", "funny" and "stuff". But the other phrases you mention are not used here as far as I know. It is interesting to think about these things.
ReplyDeleteAre these groops at right angles to the road? In which case, I've never seen any. There is either nothing or a drainage grating.
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of groop before but most of those other use of words,particularly understating something definitely made it over to southern Australia!
ReplyDeleteIt's not a word I've seen here in Sussex. Arilx
ReplyDeleteWe don't have these, the water just sits on the roads for awhile. I'm only 6 feet above sea level and the ground is just sand.
ReplyDeleteI’m not sure of the Devonshire word for a Groop. We have a lot of them along our more rural roads and I’ve always called them ditches. We have plenty of funny words in this neck of the woods though :)
ReplyDeleteWe have a few sayings here .... 'eeey up me duck' meaning 'hello'
ReplyDeleteI have never heard of groops. Land drains are called tiles here in Wisconsin. Roads here don't have groops, which probably explains why they flood so easily! Celie.
ReplyDelete