As we are into the third and last month of our pilot scheme for Buckinghamshire Dialect Rescue, I thought I would share with you what we have discovered so far…

Hopefully our findings will help us all give one last BIG heave-ho push to spread the word and add a few more words to the all new Buckingham Dialect Dictionary.

In early May, at the beginning of this process, there were 105 exclusive words in the Bucks Digital Dialect Dictionary.

As of 1200 hours on Wednesday 8th July 2026 we have 984 exclusive words all sitting side by side rubbing shoulders with entries from historic sources such as Joseph Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary and Alfred Heneage Cock’s Buckinghamshire Dialect.

What Talk Dialect is doing is adding a brand new real life time human layer of words from the people, places and industries of the Bucks county.

With a few more weeks to go on this phase of the project and more sources still coming through I would anticipate seeing the dictionary easily go over 1,000 words.

To put this in perspective, an average the old historic county glossaries had about 700-800 words each.

And as we have discovered Buckinghamshire is considered by linguistic experts to be dialect poor with an under-recording of the local language.

They say the main culprit for this under-recording is Buckinghamshire being next door to London so the dialect gets levelled, in other words, gets flattened in both broadness of sound and vocabulary. There is also that danger of being lost in the crowd too when Buckinghamshire is smothered under the term Home County.

There are really lovely glimpses and signs of life of people reaching out and rising up for this project.

Huge thanks to the person who sent in the Horace Harman Buckinghamshire book tip through.

Their timely tip while I had the book on order from Abe Books (£18) adds credence to my hunch that Buckinghamshire is possibly mislabelled as “dialect poor”.

The book is due to land any day now.

I am sensing a tip of the iceberg moment…

When building new real life real time human dictionaries, there are some interesting people and word patterns that emerge out of the woodwork.

Firstly, there are the people and the places and the products. All these are high-volume local essential words and ways we all talk about and search for constantly.

Then there are the broad topics where Buckinghamshire and what it offers are the things people inside and outside county are talking about.

It has been fascinating to connect with word enthusiasts across the county, discover past and present industries such as chair-making, film-making and hat-plaiting to name but a few discovered so far…

And to start working with super helpful people in the local communities and institutions like Buckinghamshire Council and Archives who have been keeping the Buckinghamshire flag flying high for decades.

To help our word hunters and dialect detectives here are some of our findings and most frequent and trending words people talk about in and out of Buckinghamshire:

1. The Intrinsic Link Between People and Places and Produce

• Buckinghamshire People and Families — Buckinghamshire’s real heart lies in the grand estates and generations of furniture makers, local farmers, diverse modern families, and commuters who anchor the county’s vibrant, everyday activities. Much of the social history of Buckinghamshire is carried by families who anchored the county’s defining trades for generations:
  The Wood Turners & Chairmakers (“Bodgers”): In High Wycombe and the Chiltern woods, families like the Skulls (pioneered by Charles and Edwin Skull), the Atkinses, the Birches, and the Plitts transformed the area into the furniture capital of the country, hand-turning beech wood legs into iconic Windsor chairs.
  The Farming Families: Tenant and working-class agricultural families like the Hares family (who still run Buckmoorend Farm today), the Reffells of Horton, the Headys, and the Grovers worked the arable land, rearing livestock and managing the Buckinghamshire countryside through centuries of industrial change.
• Buckinghamshire Council – The backbone of the county, helping people creat and see culture to bin collections and council tax to planning permissions.
• Buckinghamshire school term dates – A massive perennial spike in parents doing searches, particularly around the transitions between terms or just before half-term holidays showing the young bloodlines of Bucks are kept flowing.
• Buckinghamshire grammar schools & 11 Plus Bucks – Perhaps this is becuase Buckinghamshire is one of the few UK counties that completely retains a selective grammar school system. Consequently, conversations and Internet searches regarding the 11+ exam, school catchments, and results are exceptionally high compared to other regions. Schools such as Beaconsfield High School: affectionately known as “Becky High,” The Royal Grammar School (High Wycombe) and
  Dr Challoner’s Schools are recognised as exceptional educational establishments in the county.

2. Places: Major Towns & Commercial Hubs

When people search for things in the county, they typically bypass the word “Buckinghamshire” and look directly for the major hubs:

• Milton Keynes: Historically part of Bucks, though administratively distinct, this drives massive search traffic for shopping, the ski slope, and football.
• High Wycombe, Aylesbury, and Amersham: High traffic for local news, train times to London, and property listings.

3. Travel, Tourism & Commuting

People looking into Buckinghamshire from the outside like day-trippers from London usually drive up these words, chats and search terms:

• Chiltern Hills walks – A massive search trend, especially on weekends and during the spring/summer months.
• Pinewood Studios – Located in Iver, Buckinghamshire, this global film hub frequently spikes in searches when major movie news drops.
• National Trust Buckinghamshire – Searches targeting famous country estates like Waddesdon Manor, Cliveden, and Stowe.
• Bletchley Park: Once the top-secret home of Britain’s World War II codebreakers, Bletchley Park is where Alan Turing and teammates cracked Germany’s Enigma cipher, shortening the war and saving millions of lives. This is arguably one of the most important linguistics places in the UK. More on this coming soon…

Living and breathing these terms daily builds an unspoken bond among the people who say them so rather than take them for granted, Talk Dialect begins at the beginning: with the bedrock of human expression.

4. Buckinghamshire Produce and Products

• Buckinghamshire boasts a rich larder, famously tied to the artisan Windsor cherry crops of the Chilterns and historic pastries like the bacon-and-potato Bacon Badger (or is it called Bacon Clanger? Another blog coming soon about this). Today, the county thrives on premium Chiltern beef, award-winning Guernsey milk cheeses from Marlow, and locally crafted farmhouse ales and gin.

It might seem odd to start with these seemingly everyday obvious words and phrases we are finding when talking about dialects.

Regional and social dialects are the heartbeat of community identity. For local people, terms like “Buckinghamshire Council” or “Pinewood Studios” are not just administrative labels or tourist landmarks; they are the literal fabric of daily life.

These words anchor residents to a shared geography, carrying deep personal history and cultural weight. Regional speech fosters an immediate sense of belonging and mutual understanding.

It’s later in the day now.

I have been reading some of the entries we have kindly been told and are recording in the dictionary.

(Luckily for me the dictionary is my favourite book, hence the project.)

The engrossing entries reveal something I sensed in how humans love to talk, so it is a joy to read these words all together like one big happy bonkers family.

To my mind, you can feel the fun and wisdom and the upright beautiful poetry pouring from these well-worn words like a portal through time.

Here are some choice entries to give you a taster too:

• Argisome – A wonderful adjective used to describe someone who is notoriously argumentative or prone to bickering.
• Barley-spanker – A historic culinary term native to the area for a traditional, flat barley-cake.
• Be I Bucks, be I buggery! —
  An exclamation of comedy surprise or disbelief — roughly “Well, I’ll be damned!” People say it to emphasise astonishment: “Be I Bucks, be I buggery! Look at that!” It’s a double oath (one softened, one a tad cruder), now mostly heard as a jokey expression of surprise. A variation of the famous county phrase: I be Bucks be I. Thanks to Lisa Kathryn for making us smile with this phrase.
• Doffting – A lovely old regional verb for going wading or paddling in the water.
• Drotched – Used by older generations to describe a woman who looked particularly unkempt, disheveled, or untidy.
• Friz – The dialect version of “frozen” (e.g., “The pond is completely friz over”).
• Pepsing down – A brilliant alternative to “pouring”; used by locals when there is an absolute downpour of heavy rain.
• Stiggard – The traditional local term for an old, gnarled tree stump.
• The Parish Lantern – A beautiful, traditional Buckinghamshire idiom used to describe the moon.
• Wusser – A highly localized piece of historic canal slang, specifically referring to a fly-boat operating on the local canals.

Extra Bonus For Those Reading This Far — Featured Word of the Week

And a special mention goes to our Web 3.0 West African and Social Media Researcher Emmanuel C. E. Okpara who has really helped source hundreds of the old Buckinghamshire words so we can pull them all together in one central place.

We believe that people who have free and broad access to the right words at the right time, can talk equally to all types of people.

From the old to the young, the streets to board rooms, it all helps keep our ordinary words as the powerful symbols of home that they are.

This ensures that a community’s unique heritage, pride and collective memory remain vibrantly alive in everyday conversation for all people for all ways.

Thanks to all the people encouraging us and joining us on the start of this exciting journey 🗣️💚

Add your favourite Buckinghamshire Dialect to our Buckinghamshire Dictionary

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