Fancy a quick nuddle in the * countryside?

* That’s a rural stroll ... as this guide to nature’s most evocative descriptions reveals

HAVE you seen any chuggypigs in your home lately? Or been stuck in the roarie-bummlers? These are just two of the obscure traditional British words relating to nature, place and landscape that authors Robert Macfarlane and Annalena McAfee are fighting to preserve. Here’s an A to Z of some wonderful examples...

AGGY-JAGGERS:

An eerie sea mist that forms along the shore and steals inland. In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, Pip meets Magwitch out on the ‘dark flat wilderness’ in a thick aggy-jagger. The term is thought to originate in Kent.

BEE BOLE:

A sheltered cavity built into a wall, into which a beehive or ‘skep’ (a bee-house made of coiled straw) can be placed.

CHUGGYPIG:

Cornish name for a woodlouse. In Somerset it was traditionally called a ‘ gramfy- coocher’, and in Gloucestershire a ‘johnny-grump’.

CROZIER:

A furled new fern frond, pushing up from the earth in spring; also known from its shape as a ‘ bishop’s crook’ or ‘fiddle-head’.

DIAMOND DUST:

Ground- level cloud composed of tiny ice crystals, which are perceived as glittering, floating specks.

DUSTSCEAWUNG:

Literally meaning ‘consideration of the dust’, this is an Old English term for the contemplation of that which has been lost and the transience of things.

GAFFLE:

East Anglian word meaning ‘to feed together noisily’. Most commonly used in reference to ducks.

GLISK:

A Shetland word for a gleam of sunlight through cloud, or a glow of heat from a fire.

GLOSSAMER:

The shining filaments of spiders’ webs spun across a landscape, best seen in dawn slant-light.

HOLLOWAY:

From ‘hollow way’ — a sunken path, harrowed deep into the landscape by centuries of rain, wheelrun, hoof-hit and footfall. The word started as the Old English term ‘Hol Weg’. In Nottinghamshire dialect, hollow ways are known as ‘dumbles’.

HONKYDONKS: HRAN-RAD: INOSCULATION:

East Anglian word for boots or shoes made heavy by tramping through mud.

Meaning ‘whale road’ — a poetic Old English term for the sea.

The growing together of branches. From Latin to kiss.

JIRBLE: osculare,

Scottish word meaning to play joyfully in and around water, as children do.

LANDSKEIN:

The weaving and braiding of horizon lines, often seen on hazy days in hill country, where the outlines of several hills or mountains are visible, each paler than the last. ‘Skein’ means a length of yarn or thread, or a flock of wild geese or swans in flight.

LOOMING:

Cumbrian term for the movement of river water, coursing slowly and silently in a deep pool.

MACHAIR:

Gaelic term for low-lying coastal land of grass and white shell-sand.

MOULIN:

A smooth- sided ice shaft cut into a glacier by water, often plunging from surface to bedrock. From the French for ‘mill’. These have been known to ‘sing’ eerily as wind moves through them.

NETTLE-DANCING:

Trying to avoid being stung when walking between banks of stinging nettles.

NUDDLE:

To walk in a dreamy or preoccupied manner, from Old English. ‘Poddling’ and ‘pathering’ are Northern variants of this.

ORE-STONE:

A Shetland word for a seaweed- covered boulder on the tideline.

PETRICHOR:

The rich, earthy scent that is produced when rain falls on dry soil. From Greek petra, meaning stone, and ichor, meaning the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods.

RADJEL:

A Cornish term for a fox fortress — a pile of rocks in which a fox makes its lair.

ROARIE-BUMMLERS:

An evocative Scottish term for fast-moving storm clouds — literally ‘noisy blunderers’.

SCRIBBLE-LARK:

A folk name for the yellowhammer, because the bird’s eggs look as if they have been scribbled on in ink.

SELKIES:

In Scottish folklore, mysterious, shapeshifting and elegant seal-folk who live as seals at sea and people on land.

SELVEDGE:

untilled land bordering a field. The same word is used for the edge of a piece of woven material that has been finished to prevent it from unravelling.

SHIVELIGHTS:

Sharp lances of bright sunshine that pierce the canopy or foliage of a wood.

SHADOWTACKLE:

The opposite of shivelights — the shifting deep shadows cast by trees and branches on a woodland floor, in between dappled beams. Both terms were coined by the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins.

SILLION:

The shiningly smooth face or curve of earth that has been turned over by the action of plough or harrow. From French (furrow).

SMEAUSE: sillon

Sussex word for the holes in a hedgerow made by the repeated passage of small animals.

SMOOT- HOLE:

A gap designed into a drystone wall to allow free passage of some creatures (such as hares) but not others (such as sheep). ‘Smoot’ comes from the Old Norse word meaning narrow passage or hole.

smátta, SPANGING:

Striding out vigorously: a Scottish word from ‘spang’, to spring.

STRAVAIG:

Scottish word meaning to wander around aimlessly for pleasure.

SUN WANE:

Norfolk name for the path of sunlight reflected on water made by fish swimming just below the surface. The moonlight equivalent is ‘moon-wane’.

SUTHERING TIDE:

East Yorkshire term for the sound of the sea lapping peacefully against the shore. The word ‘ suther’ means to make a pleasant sighing sound.

WOLF LIGHT:

Meaning dusk, twilight. In the northwest of England, dusk used to be known as ‘eawl-leet’ — ‘owllight’. Other countries also have evocative terms for twilight: in Marathi, a language of western India, it is called

Kaatarwel or ‘scissor-time’, when you are haunted by memories that cut through the heart; for the French it is the moment entre chien et loup — between dog and wolf: the time when the familiar becomes wild.

WONTYTUMP:

Herefordshire word meaning molehill.

ZEBN-SLAPER:

Literally meaning ‘ seven- sleeper’, this Somerset folk word refers to the dormouse, because of its seven- month hibernation period. In his poem The GoodMorrow, John Donne refers to the term: ‘I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? ... Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?’