Short for ‘engine’, a term used for a variety of mechanical contrivances but in early coal-mining records especially one that was horse-powered, serving as a hoist or pump.
In earlier centuries, the girdle was an important article of clothing, serving ‘to secure or confine’ garments or carry accoutrements such as a purse or weapon (OED).
Gist is an aphetic spelling of ‘agist’, used as a verb, noun, and adjective. The verb means to sell rights of pasturage, principally for cattle and horses, which rights were jealously guarded by landowners.
Used of horses suffering from ‘glanders’, that is a contagious disease characterised by swellings beneath the jaw and the discharge of mucous from the nostrils.
An alternative word for the ‘dial’ which miners used for surveying underground. These valuable instruments were probably in the hands of viewers or agents.
One early meaning of the verb was to make something shine like glass, by rubbing and polishing: it was used of swords and other weapons in 1515 and 1648 (OED).
This was a small sum of money, said to have been so called originally because it was intended for a charitable or religious purpose. However, by the Tudor period it had come to be associated principally with bargains, especially as ‘earnest’ money, paid over at a new tenancy agreement or when a servant or workman was first hired.
In many parts of Yorkshire the channels which drained riverside land were called ‘gotes’ or ‘goits’, and the goit stocks were probably the wooden parts of the channel in which the water ran.
We are very familiar with the plural noun ‘goods’, used in the sense of movable property, but formerly the word could also be used for livestock, certainly in Scotland and the north of England.