Britain's disappearing words celebrated, from 'shreep' to 'sun-scald'
A new exhibition at Wordsworth House is trying to keep alive some of the rural idioms which are fast-disappearing.


A new photography exhibition at the childhood home of Lake District poet William Wordsworth celebrates the dying dialect of Britain’s landscape.
‘The Word-Hoard: Love letters to Our Land’ has been curated by award-winning nature writer Robert Macfarlane. It follows his 2015 bestseller Landmarks, which explored the regional dialect words connected to nature, terrain and weather, and brings together 25 dramatic photographs by his parents, Rosamund and John Macfarlane – including the gorgeous image at the top of this page.
The words in Mr Macfarlane’s vocabulary include 'shreep', an East Anglian word for mist clearing slowly, and 'sun-scald', a Sussex word for a patch of bright sunlight on water.
The exhibition runs until September 3 at Wordsworth House in Cockermouth - find more information here.
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Annunciata is director of contemporary art gallery TIN MAN ART and an award-winning journalist specialising in art, culture and property. Previously, she was Country Life’s News & Property Editor. Before that, she worked at The Sunday Times Travel Magazine, researched for a historical biographer and co-founded a literary, art and music festival in Oxfordshire. Lancashire-born, she lives in Hampshire with a husband, two daughters and a mischievous pug.
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