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Of uncertain meaning.
places York
dates 1503

The contexts in which the word occurs show that it referred to combustible material.
places Farnley
dates 1715

spellings goatskin
The skin of goats, used to make garments.
places Bossall Hull York
dates 1454 1465 1510

A regional spelling of cobirons.
places Huddersfield
dates 1699

An obsolete form of gobbet, that is a piece or fragment.
places West Riding
dates 1693

god

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.
dates 1531 1633 1914

spellings god-barn
A god-child.
dates 1541 1549 1558

A child born out of wedlock.
dates 1516

A contraption designed to help children to walk.
dates 1709 1758-1762

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.
places York
dates 1679 1761

One who ‘beats’ or hammers gold metal into thinner plates or gold-leaf.
dates 1233-1256 1277 1331 1333-1337 1645 1655

Used commonly as a name for oxen, possibly the regional word for marigold, or a reference to distinctive colouring.
dates 1558 1560 1593

spellings goods
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.
dates 1485 1516 1533 1552 1593 1608 1635

The male head of a household, and a title given to those under the rank of gentleman.
dates 1510 1540

To sell or be sold, an expression used by John Brearley, a Wakefield clothier.
places Wakefield
dates 1761

The domestic goose, the female bird, which in early manorial records was linked with the farm animals or cattle, not the poultry within the fold.
dates 1562 1641

A hutch for fattening geese.
dates 1624 1666

spellings gare
A triangular piece of land, often one in the open fields where ‘shuts’ met at an angle.
dates 1548 1642 1670 1681 1723


A piece of armour for the throat.
dates 1539 1567 1613

dates 1130 1297 1485 1560

spellings goit
A water course or channel, a word which occurs from the thirteenth century as a minor place-name element.
dates 1261 1350 1421 1502-1503 1586 1594 1663 1791

The past participle of ‘to get’.
dates 1561 1608

spellings gourdmaker gourdskin
Gourds were the large fruit of certain plants, and when these were hollowed out and dried they served as vessels or floats.
places York Cotness
dates 1328 1379 1446

dates 1607-1608 1628

The right to dig peat.

A book of antiphons sung between the Epistle and the Gospel at the Eucharist (OED).
dates 1395 1433 1459 1559 1591

spellings kermes
The seed of cereal plants, corn, often a plural.
dates 1305 1354 1374 1394-1395 1410 1454 1508 1529


dates 1541 1549 1573

An archaic word for grandfather, or less precisely forefather.
dates 1455 1466 1543 1575

Originally a place where grain was stored, a barn or granary, but in the pre-Dissolution period it was used of the outlying farms or estates held by the great abbeys.
places Clapham Rievaulx
dates 1200 1535

spellings girse gress
The word ‘grass’ was commonly used in the past in the sense of pasture, as either a noun or a verb, and it had so many variant spellings that it can sometimes be difficult to recognise.
dates 1484 1494 1517 1535 1539

spellings grasshouse grassman gerse grisse house
There is a reference to 'Hurdmannis et Bondis et Gresmannis' c. 1150, where the context makes it clear that a grassman was a certain class of tenant (OED).
dates 1280 1461 1542 1551 1557 1600 1624

places Wakefield
dates 1734

A female tenant with ‘grassman’ status.
places South Cave
dates 1558

A kitchen utensil with a rough surface, used for grating bread, nutmegs, ginger, etc.
dates 1485 1565 1568 1572 1658

This word has an Old Norse origin and it referred to an office holder, usually a manorial steward or churchwarden but applicable to a variety of other offices. It was current in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and possibly in other parts of the former Danelaw, where it regularly interchanged with ‘grieve’ and ‘greave’.
dates 1274 1332-1333 1459 1563 1619-1621

To dig, to inter.
dates 1541 1570 1648 1775 1809

A name given to implements used in a variety of crafts, especially to a shaving tool used by bowyers.
places York Doncaster
dates 1434 1458

Some extensive manorial territories were subdivided for convenience into ‘graveships’, each under a ‘grave’ whose entitlement to the office was based on the amount of land that he held.
dates 1460 1550 1560

A kind of cloth.
places Slaithwaite
dates 1587

In early references to fur this was probably the gray squirrel, since ‘greywerk’ was the term for the finest squirrel skins.
dates 1366 1388 1410 1431 1445 1463 1466

One of several alternative names for the badger.
dates 1648 1676 1690

To offer money as a bribe.
places Helmsley Skipton
dates 1606 1686

A cake or compressed lump of animal fat.
dates 1528 1578 1582 1587

dates 1301 1307 1465-1466 1527 1579 1640

A common term for timber that was suitable for building houses and the like.
places Ripon Dewsbury
dates 1392-1393 1591

A regional word for a small wood, similar in meaning to ‘grove’ which was not used in Yorkshire.
dates 1527 1638

spellings greces
dates 1396-1397 1485 1497 1499 1501 1558 1583

A way over green or uncultivated ground.
dates 1277 1288 1346 1379 1438 1516

Green Ginger is the undried root of a tropical plant prized for its hot spicy taste and it was being imported into Yorkshire by the fourteenth century, possibly much earlier.
dates 1397-1398 1398 1421 1434 1464 1494 1535 1537 1651

spellings greenhue
This was an English equivalent of ‘vert’ and could apply to the green parts of trees in the woods and forests: and making waste 'in the greene hew of the Forrest' in referred to in 1598 (OED).
dates 1599-1600 1626 1680-1689

Used of an ox with green or young horns, noted c.1460 in the Towneley Mysteries (OED). It was later not uncommon as a name for cows and heifers.
dates 1533 1576 1591 1631 1642 1685

Photo by Kreuzschnabel CC BY-SA 3.0