Bruce in Indianapolis heard older Indiana farm folks use work-brickle for someone who’s industrious, or, in the negative, not much of a worker. The expression goes back to dialects of the British Isles and survives in U.S. pockets with shifting spellings and meanings. Dictionary of American Regional English evidence points to work-brittle as a likely headword, while the late-1800s English Dialect Dictionary includes work bracco. In William Howitt’s Madam Dorrington of the Dene, Vincent promises to be “as ravenously ambitious, and as gigantically work-brickle” as his father could wish. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Same Word “Work-Brickle” Can Praise Industry or Mean Sluggardly Laziness”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, yes. This is Bruce Kinsey from Indianapolis, Indiana.
Hello, Bruce.
What’s up?
I’ve heard something used by old timers and mentioned by my mother who grew up on a farm. It was a workbrickle, meaning to indicate someone’s either workbrickle or they’re not as being lazy or they’re effective at their job. And I don’t hear it used in common usage today, but I just wondered, you know, where’d that come from?
Bruce, how do you spell that?
Well, the way I spell it is phonetically. I mean, I don’t know. It’s B-R-I-C-K-E-L-L is the way I guessed at it. So W-O-R-K-B-R-I-C-K-E-L-L.
This is familiar, Martha, right?
Right.
And they’re two different words, right?
Yes.
And you’re in Indiana. That’s interesting because that’s where I’ve heard of it the most. Here’s the short story on this is that this goes back to the dialects of the British Isles. And it’s got pockets of usage here in the United States. I actually had a reason to ask the chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English about this exact expression earlier this year. And she replied to me and gave me a little bit of information that they haven’t published yet. So here’s a big scoop for you. She says that they’ll probably put it under the spelling of work brittle, B-R-I-T-T-L-E, which is a little more common. But there’s also an entry in the English dialect dictionary, which is from the late 1800s, for work bracco, B-R-A-C-C-O. So like a lot of dialect expressions, there are many spelling variants. And it’s got two primary meanings. As you say, one of them means eager to work or energetic or enthusiastic and industrious, that kind of thing, right? But the other one is exactly the opposite. It means lazy or to be a sluggard. So if you are a work, you can be a work brickle, meaning that you are a lazy person. And this happens sometimes with dialect expressions, especially if they’re mostly spoken aloud and not put in print. They do sometimes suffer an inversion of meaning to mean exactly the opposite. I’ve heard it used for meaning, you know, so if someone’s work brickle, it means that they’re a good worker here, used here. And if he isn’t very work-brickle, I’ve heard that used quite a bit. That means they’re lazy. But other than that, that’s all I’ve heard here.
All right.
And you’re saying you don’t use it, but it’s the older generation that you heard use it.
Yeah, exactly. I asked a friend of mine today who’s 65 and lives out in the country, and I asked him if he’s heard of that before. He goes, oh, yeah, I’ve heard of it, but it’s only the old-timers that use that. Yeah, I definitely would say this one is probably headed for the archaic list. It’s not that common, and it’s so odd that it’s hard to grasp and get on first hearing.
All right. Well, thank you so much for your call, Bruce.
All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for straightening that out.
Sure thing.
All right. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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