I call my evening meal “dinner”, while my partner names it “supper”. For others, my version might refer to lunch, while my significant other’s term could be confused for a late evening mini-meal.
That’s because, broadly speaking, the word you use for this course depends on where you’re from. The New York Times’ impressive British-Irish dialect quiz captures this difference and dozens of others, narrowing your answers down to specific regions.
Though it’s not quite as involved as all that, a new survey from YouGov has shown another word that could reveal your hometown: “alleyway”, and its many variations.
Rosalind Chang via Unsplash
Terms for alleyways, by UK locations
A lot of the UK (84%) use the term “alley”, while 31% use “passage”. But some areas use other terms, too.
By word and area, these are:
1) A “ginnel”
This term is used by people in:
- West Yorkshire (59%),
- Lancashire (55%),
- South Yorkshire (54%),
- Greater Manchester (51%), and
- Scotland (7%).
2) A “cut”
An alley is mostly referred to as a “cut” in:
- Northumberland (31-35%),
- Tyne and Wear (31-35%),
- Durham (31-35%),
- Cumbria (24%), and
- Teeside (18%).
3) An “entry”
- Merseyside (36%),
- Staffordshire (22%),
- Cheshire (20%),
- The West Midlands county (19%),
- Clwyd in North Wales (19%), and
- Warwickshire (16%).
4) A “snicket”
This shows up most commonly in:
- North and West Yorkshire (40-41%),
- East or South Yorkshire (28-32%).
5) An “eightfoot” or “tenfoot”
The term, which changes according to the length of an alley, is used in:
- East Riding of Yorkshire (34%),
- Hull, more specifically (56%),
- Lincolnshire (23%) – to be precise, the parts of Lincolnshire that used to be in Humberside.
6) A “jitty”
You’ll see this used most often in:
- Derbyshire (47%),
- Leicestershire (38%),
- Nottinghamshire (28%), and
- Northamptonshire (18%).
7) A “gully”
That’s heard more often in:
- The Black Country (25%),
- Mid and South Glamorgan (21%).
8) A “twitten”
A rare “exception” to the broad trend of Southern English areas not using alternatives to “alley”, this term is seen in:
- East Sussex (29%), and
- West Sussex (19%).
9) A “close”
This study found that most people who used this term were from:
- All of Scotland more broadly (41%), though it’s not evenly used: usage is at about 62% in Fife, but 27% in the Grampian region.
10) A “vennel”
Again, this showed up across Scotland (13% overall), but it’s more common in:
- South East Scotland (36%),
- Edinburgh (24%), and
- Tayside, Fife, southwest Scotland, and Central Scotland (13-16%).
11) A “wynd”
You’ll find this mostly in:
- Scotland more generally (11%), and
- Areas like Fife (26%) more specifically.
12) A “pend”
- Scotland more generally (5%), and
- Tayside more specifically (17%).
