cack-handed ---- ---- clammin

C
cack-handed:- NY
clumsy-handed : Kellet lists this as also meaning left-handed and I have heard this reported from South Bank but more often it seems to means clumsy handed in Teesside.

caffy-hearted:- NY
squeamish, tender-hearted. I think in Mbro this is sometimes pronounced cathy-hearted just as my mother says it. It is a NY word. I can understand how it became cathy given that Mbro seemed to be awash with Cathys of all shapes and sizes.( I’ve also heard ‘toffee-hearted’ to mean the same thing.)

Callyat:-
The California area of Eston. Callyatter= person from this area. California was built to house miners in the 1850’s. The iron-rush was likened to the California Gold-rush of 1849…hence the name California for part of an English village. Great Ayton has a California for exactly the same reason.

candy, candies,:- TS
sweets. This is not an American import. This has always been the Teesside word

cannon:- NE?
A children’s street game . A tin can in the middle of the street on which sticks were placed. Two teams one on each pavement threw a ball to knock the tin and sticks over. I cannot remember what we did then but I have a feeling this was not the end of the game.

canny:-NE
Most often in Teesside it means nice, cute, having a pleasing personality. This perhaps links it with the NY ‘conny’. The ultimate Teesside accolade is to be called ‘dead canny’. It can also emphasize quantity when placed before a word which actually means ‘a little’. So to pay ‘ a canny bit’ means, in fact ,to pay a lot. A canny few means many. Its third use is to mean cautiously. ‘ be canny’ ‘ take care’‘watch out’ “Go canny!”

Canny Yatton:- NY
Local name for Great Ayton. a village just south of M’bro. Yattoner a native of Great Ayton

capped:- NY
pleased. More usually a rural Cleveland word but I’ve heard it occasionally in urban Teesside. It means pleased with an outcome, especially if something has turned out better than expected. e.g. my friend after constructing a fence which he expected to be more difficult than it turned out. “I’m capp’d with it”

Cardboard City:-TS
Grangetown. Name given originally because of prefabs built there?

carlins:- NY
dried peas. The Sunday before Palm Sunday used to be Carlin Sunday. I read in Arnold Kellet’s Yorkshire Dictionary you were supposed to soak them overnight but I remember chewing them dry.

cathy-cat:- Mbro
a catholic (to contrast with proddy dog a protestant) "Cathy-cats never wash. When they do they think they’re posh" or "Proddy-dogs never wash. When they do they think they’re posh" depending on which school you went to! There wasn’t really any sectarianism in the ‘Boro I can remember. I think it was merely neighbourhood school rivalry.

chats:- NY
small potatoes..not worth peeling—usually fried in skins

chorver:- NE
A strange word in Teesside. It tends to mean ‘mate’ or ‘pal’ but often in a menacing way . ‘Watch yerself, chorver’ It is often abbreviated to ‘chor’. Griffiths has it to mean ‘Young man’ Kellett has ‘charver’ meaning pal, mate and traces it to the Romany charvo=boy. In the Knaresborough area charver it is used in a friendly way. ‘Now then, mi owld charver’

checks:- TS
Mbro version of chuck-stones. We used 5 slightly larger than dice size cubes. Each cube had two opposite smooth sides and four corrugated surfaces We had a whole complicated routine of stages to go through..

chegs:- Darl.
The Darlington version of chuck stones or jacks

chucky, chuck:-NE & NY
a chicken (In the Mbro terraced streets in which I grew up in the forties & fifties it was still quite common for people to keep a few chickens in their back-yards)

chuddy:- NE?
chewing gum

clag:- NY & NE
to stick 'claggy'= sticky. There’s a local night club popularly known as the Claggy Mat because allegedly you stick to the floor.

claggy:-
sweaty: reported from Darlington and also Hpool

Claggy Foot:- TS
Cargo Fleet, a district of Middlesbrough

clammin:- NY
very hungry
Also reported from Whinney Banks, M’bro to apply to thirsty.