‘Wheel’, more than any other word in the vocabulary of the Hallamshire cutlers, has the power to evoke the great days of the industry. It came into use in the Middle Ages when water wheels on the fast-flowing Don and its tributaries powered the region’s corn and fulling mills, but was used from the Tudor period, certainly from 1496 (WPS166), to refer to the water wheels which drove the grinders’ wheels.
These are variants of ‘quick’, usually in the sense of living as opposed to dead, and they occurred regularly in the north and north midlands, at least as far south as Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
The meaning clearly depends on the context since the two suggested alternatives are contradictory, that is a pickled herring or a fresh herring. The early references here were probably to salted herrings.
It has two meanings but is generally used of a tinsmith, that is a worker in ‘white iron’. Rather more loosely it was applied also to those workmen who ‘finished’ off metal goods, as opposed to those who forged them (OED).
Trees with light-coloured wood, a term generally used to describe the lime, the white poplar and the wayfaring tree (OED). However, there may have been regional differences.