Tangent's biggest selling local book is the perfect gift book for young and old and is accepted worldwide as the authoritative guide to speaking Bristolian. Within two years of the publication of A Dictionary of Bristle the Bristolian word 'lush' was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. It has been responsible for a whole new generation of Bristolians reclaiming their distinctive dialect. Now in the year of its tenth anniversary, a fourth edition has been released. With a completely revised, updated, and expanded dictionary and handy phrasebook section, with more than 50 new dictionary entries, numerous additional phrases, and more than 300 updated descriptions, this popular book has been updated for the current day. In addition to all of that they have developed a new Bristolian Citizenship Test, for those wanting to relocate to the city from elsewhere, and if that wasn't enough, they've also crammed in a handy timewasting Bristolian version of a classic spotter game, called, Ark At Ee! Harry Stoke and Vinny Green first launched A Dictionary of Bristle in 2003 to celebrate the remarkable success of their thatbebristle.co.uk website, a hilarious spoof news site with a passing similarity to the Bristol Evening Post's thisisbristol.com website. At its peak, the website enjoyed astonishing success and the Dictionary was originally published to help readers understand the nuances of the Bristolian words and phrases. The website is long gone, but the Dictionary goes from strength to strength.
Welcome to A Dictionary Of Bristle: a unique collection of words, phrases, and pronunciations that started life as a simple tongue-in-cheek section from our satirical website, That Be Bristle. From humble beginnings this collection has grown - thanks to Bristolians throughout the city and around the globe, who are proud of who they are and how they sound. We are now able to offer you this humorous yet curiously informative insight into the strange sounding language of the south west’s capital city.
Bristolian is a distinctly warm-sounding dialect that, like most regional variations of language, contains standard English words and phrases that mean something very different to its native speakers. In a city where a drive is somebody at the wheel and not something you do on a Sunday afternoon, and a spanner is never going to help you fix a car, life can easily get confusing for the unwary.
Bristolian also has many words and pronunciations that are unique to the city which can often baffle people not familiar with the rolled R’s, the dropped H’s, and the addition of L’s to the end of practically any word that ends in a vowel. As if that isn’t potential enough to strike a look of bewilderment onto the face of a visitor, the unaided ear also has to deal with the confusion of ownership and tense, and the use of the personal pronoun Ee (he) for impersonal objects: "Me ammer? Ee's over yer look."
Like all regional dialects though, Bristolian is in danger of dying out. With the large new suburbs of Bradley Stoke and Emersons Green attracting people to Bristol from all over the UK, the 30,000+ students that fill the universities each term, and the widening of new middle class enclaves gentrifying the housing of many former working areas of the city, from Bishopston and Horfield to Easton and Southville, the melting pot of language in the city is slowly diluting Bristol’s true identity.
Strongholds of the language do still exist, mostly in South Bristol communities such as Bedminster, Knowle West, and Hartcliffe; areas that traditionally are more working class and have a less fluid population. Some classic words and phrases, such as gurt lush (very nice) and awlrite me old babber? (hello how are you my good friend?), have also now passed into ironic/tongue-in-cheek usage and can be heard muttered throughout even the most cosmopolitan bars and offices across the city. In part the online version of this dictionary has helped this along.
The aim of this dictionary is to collate words and phrases in common usage in and around Bristol, both past and present, in a bid to keep the language alive. Some entries in this collection cross generations and some cross over into other regional dialects and slang, but all are listed here if they play, or have played, a part in the makeup of Bristolian. You may not recognise them all - I’ve been a Bristolian since birth and some still surprise even me – with the help of this Dictionary we hope that you’ll soon be hearing – and understanding - a lot more of them.
Harry Stoke
October 2003
