From Cheshire: ‘You can frab a horse by pulling too hard at the reins’. The word seems to be a sound blend of fret and crab, or something similar, and the wide range of meanings suggests that it was very widely used, along with its derivatives. A baby teething? Frabby. Get out of bed on the wrong side? Frabbly. Irritated at someone? Frabbit. frack (verb) Gloucestershire, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Suffolk No, not the sense that makes the news these days. This verb turns up in various locations in such senses as ‘abound, crowd together, fill to excess’. From Northamptonshire: ‘The currant trees were as full as they could frack’. From East Anglia: ‘The church was fracking full’. So anything full to overflowing would be frackfull. In Gloucestershire if you were fracking you were fussing about. fribble (verb) Cheshire, Norfolk, Scotland, Suffolk, Warwickshire, Yorkshire To trifle, idle, fuss. From Suffolk: ‘He goes fribbling about the whole day’. The word is a sound blend, probably from frivolous with the -bble ending used in words expressing repeated erratic movement (wobble, dribble … ). I wasn’t expecting to find a linguistic sense – ‘to speak fine English’ – but there was one in Norfolk. In response to a teacher explaining that ‘grammar is the art of speaking and writing correctly’, a student replied: ‘Ow, miss, kinder what fooks in our part call framin or fribblin’. frowsty (adjective) Berkshire, Cheshire, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire Musty, ill-smelling, not fresh; heavy-looking, peevish. It’s echoed in several other words (frown, frosty, crusty), but is probably closest to froward (= ‘from’ + ‘ward’) – going contrary to a desired state of affairs. From Worcestershire: ‘The snuff was frowsty’. From Shropshire: ‘W’y yo’ looken as sleepy an’ frousty this mornin’ as if yo’ ’adna bin i’ bed las’ night’. Words with a similar sound and meaning – frowsy or frowy – have been recorded in most parts of the British Isles. fubsy (adjective) Lancashire, Yorkshire Plump, in a nice sort of way. Rudyard Kipling liked this word. In Jungle Book, Baloo uses it in one of his laws of the jungle: ‘Oppress not the cubs of the stranger, but hail them as Sister and Brother, For though they are little and fubsy, it may be the Bear is their mother. ’ When in 2008 a dictionary company announced a list of words it would omit from its next edition, The Times led a ‘save a word’ campaign, with fubsy supported by, among others, Stephen Fry. fummasing or thumbasing (noun or verb) Cheshire, Lancashire Fumbling with the hands as if the fingers were all thumbs. From Cheshire: ‘What art fummasin with at th’lock? ’ The source is thumb, with the replacement of th by f – showing that this sound change isn’t solely a modern (‘Estuary English’) phenomenon. The word would also be used if you were just dawdling. From Lancashire: ‘Roger kept telling hur as he seed hur fummashin abeawt that hoo’d be too late’. funch (verb) Dorset, Hampshire, Isle of Wight Push, thrust, strike with the fist.