What Do You Call an Alleyway?
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Until I moved to Yorkshire I had never heard of the following words to describe an alleyway
Ginnel or Gennel
Snicket or Snickelways
What do you call an alleyway?
I call it an alleyway or sometimes just an alley. I haven't heard of those other words for it.
In Manchester they were usually called entries too, but I'd never heard them called jiggers.
I assume they were called entries because the back doors were used more than the front doors to enter houses.
davidstockport Jigger - a back entry or alley, recorded since 1902 - the word jig was often used to refer to something small or narrow, and it developed several slang uses, such as a narrow door, a prison cell, an illegal distillery, and (as in Liverpool) a narrow passageway
We also say Jigger Rabbit for a cat - my little boy was upset when my Dad said come and see the jigger rabbit to find it was a black cat!
emmabeckz I recall jiggered was also another way of saying knackered or buggered.
I didn't know you were a Scouser, not that it matters but I had the assumption that you would all be Southern. I've never heard it called the jigger!
emmabeckz A Jigger where I live is what you go to have in the alley not the alley lol.
Always been called an alleyway where I come from. Saying that when I watch coronation street that’s where I learnt the word ginnel.
Ginnel where I live now in the north but alley or back alley where I used to live in the south.
I come from Wales so when people were giving me directions in York, I thought they were talking another language
Dennab Yorkshire for "It isn't located within the metal container": T'int in Tin
Never heard of most of these sayings, but MrsChimp says that they call in a ginnel where she comes from.
Always been an alley for me.
It's known as a close where I am from. So people would say they live at the end of the close and it meant they were the house at the end of the alley. Never called it anything else.
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