Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 4.djvu/478

 396 NOTES AND QUERIES. uo» s. iv. NOV. u, iv& life with the eye which nature bestows only on a poet." CHARLES MASEFIELD. WORPLE WAY (10th S. iv. 348).—The diffi- culty is surely due to want of care. Amongst the books referred to, the A.-S. dictionary •was not one, else it would have been dis- covered that the A.-S. word was not weorpen, and that it did not mean "to twist"; and this is the source of all the trouble. It seems to be the constant ill-luck of Old English to be misspelt and misinterpreted. The A.-S. verb is weorpan (with a, not e), and it means to throw or cast up. Shake- speare's mmddwarp means " mole," because it " warps" or casts up mould. The Low G. wurp sometimes means soil washed up by the sea; and Du. worpel (G. •uriirfel) means a die, because it can be thrown. There seems to be no reason why worple may not refer to cast-up soil or to a made way. WALTER W. SKEAT. Between Chichester and the village of North Mundham there is a bridle path run- ning across three meadows known as the Wapple (or Worple) Fields. This term I have generally understood to refer more particu- larly to the gates between each meadow. These are double, and so hung that they swing towards each other in closing. This arrangement makes it impossible for cattle to open the gates by pressing against them ; but, having no latch or fastening, they may be easily pulled open by an equestrian. Per- haps the Worple Way referred to above formerly had similar gates. S. P. SMITH. This is the third appearance of this ques- tion in ' N. & Q.' See 1" S. ix. 125, 232, 478 ; 7th S. vii. 269, 314, 437. Much valuable space would be saved by searching the General Indexes before submitting a query. EVERARD HOME GOLEM AN. " TINTERERO " (10tfi S. iv. 267, 316).—What is referred to under this name is a huge shark, of a particularly formidable species, abound- ing in the Gulf of California, to the pearl divers along the shores of which it is said to be as much an object of dread as other descriptions of sharks are objects of in- difference. Lieut. Hardy, in his 'Travels in the Interior of Mexico,' 1829, spells the word as here—"tinterero"—and relates a terrible experience on the part of a Mexican acquaint- ance of his with one of these monsters. But Gabriel Ferry de Bellemare, in his interesting and thrilling tale of ' Le Pecheur de Perles," gives what I consider the true spelling of the word, namely, " tintorera." The word is undoubtedly Spanish in form, and the termination feminine in that language, though what the connexion can be between this voracious fish and dyeing (tintorero=* Iyer) I cannot say. Not impossibly the Spanish word may be a corruption of some word in the Opata, Hiaqui. or other dialect of Sonora. THOS. WILSON. 43, Taviatock Square, W.C. I have no doubt that MR. PLAIT is on the right track. The great cuttlefish is the creature indicated. MR. CRAWFORD also is right in supposing the word to be a mis- print, and that there is no such Spanish word. The real word is tintero (from tinta, ink), meaning an ink-bottle or ink-horn. This is frequently used in the phrase "Qned6 en el tintero" (" it remained in the ink- stand "), said of a letter, or of a sentence in a letter, which has been left unwritten. ALDENHAM. Tintero is Spanish for " inkstand"; in Eng- land the octopus or cuttlefish is sometimes called the " ink fish"; in Italian the word for "inkstand " and "cuttlefish" is cxlamaio. CALAMARY. "NUTTING" (10th S. iv. 265, 358).—I feel sure that both MR. RATCLIFFE and J. T. F. will be grateful for a reference to a passage in the poetical works of the late Thomas Hood, in which he supplies_ convincing proof that nuts are deaf. In his account or an episode in the life of Dame Eleanor Spearing, which turns upon her extreme deafness, among many other metaphors he writes :— She was deaf as a nut, for a nnt, no donbt, Is deaf to the grub that ia hoiloiciny out. Can anything further be said on the subject? ALAN STEWART. The expression " He cracks no deaf [usually pronounced dee-of] nuts" is common in Cheshire in reference to a man who make* no bad bargains or bad investments. 8. " CATERPILLERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH " (10th S. iv. 248).—MR. BAXTER has no donbt consulted the article on this in the 'New English Dictionary.' When that article was written (1888), the readers for the Dictionary had found no earlier example than that on Gossqn's title-page, and no earlier instance has since been sent in for the Supplement. But the article shows that the transferred ap- plication of caterpillar to a rapacious person, a " piller of the people " or "of the country. had been in use for nearly forty years, so " caterpillar of the commonwealth "