Debate: Twittens and alleys

I live in Plymouth, though I wasn't born here. Some of the small connecting streets in the older parts of town are called "opes". Everywhere else I've lived has been "ope"less although at one point I lived in Chalfont St Peter in Buckinghamshire and there they had a street of newish bungalows (as far as I remember) called The Pightle"

Fogey

I use the word twitchell to refer to an alley between houses and I'm from Solihull. I'm so glad it exists as my husband always taking the mick out of me when I say it!

I don't know if this is 'local' as such, but in west wales, if you go out in the cold with wet skin, it becomes inflamed and you 'scarge'.

It's either a mythical complaint, like getting warts from touching a toad, or a word for mild frostbite.

Can people reply with their region of Britain and their word for the pathways / passage / footpath between houses? I've heard of ginnel...where's that found?
thanks

We also have "twittens" in Chichester and this word is used by most of the people who were brought up locally.

I don't know 'twitten' but as an East Midlander by upbringing I knew 'twitchell'. Another word for these small passageways between houses, that we used more often, was 'a jitty' - does anyone else recognise that? A Lancashire friend called them 'ginnels', and now I'm in Norfolk they're 'the alleys'.

Does anyone else recognise 'a shidder' for a small piece or slice, e.g, 'I'll just have a shidder of the chocolate cake'? It may be a variant of 'shiver/sliver'; I still find myself using it. There was also 'a skerrick' for a small piece or amount, but interestingly it was only ever used in the negative, e.g.'There wasn't a skerrick of cream left.' Several negative forms seem to have survived in some dialects without their positive counterpart - I knew 'gormless' to describe a stupid person but never 'gormful' for someone with a lot of sense. (Incidentally, most dialect speakers aren't sure how to spell such words because they're usually spoken rather than written - I've seen it written as 'gaumless' too.)

One of the fascinating aspects of investigating dialects is where the borders come between particular expressions or pronunciations. Can anyone add to the well-known debate, which divides our family, about the borders, geographical and/or social, between those who pronounce 'scone' to rhyme with 'one' and those who make it rhyme with 'moan'?

Diana

I was brought up in rural NW Lancashire and remember (from the 60's)people using what I now suppose are archaic terms. Eg "lish" meaning flexible,lithe, as in the sarcastic "He's as lish as a stone pig trough" and "nesh" meaning soft, pampered. Also "he skens like a Ribble fluke" =someone who squints; a fluke is a sort of flat fish with both its eyes on one side.
Story of a small boy asked by his teacher, who was looking for the waste paper basket, "Where's the bin?" Small boy replies, "Ah bin to't toilet, miss." People used the 2nd person singular a lot, and on my last visit home, 2 weeks ago, I still heard it used.
There is a Lancashire R like the Cornish one. I still pronounce door "doh-er", really broad people (ie people with a strong local accent) pronounced it "doo-er", also "coo-at" for coat etc; they always seemed to split up dipthongs.
Finally, folk from Pilling on the Fylde coast were notoriously diificult to understand, and used very archaic words, eg spider was known as "attercop" which I noticed in Tolkiens "The Hobbit" The letter Z was called "izzard"
Now we live in NE Scotland, getting to grips with the doric.

I can't shed light on the origin, but I grew up in Brighton, and we had lots of twitterns, criss-crossing the place where I lived; I was told it was an old Sussex word (which, I suspect, may mean it has Saxon origins) - that would account for its appearance just across the border in Kent, I guess.

Aha... the OED has it spelled twitten (no 'r')

They have this citation, from 1801:

Alleys, or, as they are called here twittings, narrow passages, often not three feet wide

Apparently, in the Midlands there's a similar word - twitchel (I've never heard anyone use this, though...)