Used in the compounds ‘kirk-earth’ and ‘church-earth’, that is the churchyard. Traditionally testators wished to be buried in the church-yard and it was no doubt the dialect pronunciation ‘yearth’ for ‘earth’ that was responsible for the scribes writing ‘earth’.
This was formerly the word used in the hilly parts of the West Riding for a stone that was fixed naturally in the ground. Dry-stone wallers often incorporated earthfasts into their walls, partly to save labour.
The word formerly used for aliens from the east, that is Germans, Dutchmen and in particular Hanse merchants based in the Baltic. The OED states that this meaning seems not to have been found before the sixteenth century but there are regular references in York from two centuries earlier.
The eavesdropper was once the scourge of the local community – a person who lurked at night under the eaves of a neighbour’s house in the hope of gathering titbits of gossip that could then be turned to advantage.
Wooden handles were popular with Sheffield’s cutlers and boxwood is recorded in some inventories from 1680. In 1692, George Bullas had 5 stone 9 pounds Ebony wood in his possession valued at 10s (IH).
In the manorial system 'edish' was a regional term not only for the pasturing rights that tenants enjoyed in the common fields once the hay and corn had been harvested, but also the grass itself.