"A word after a word after a word is power" - Margaret Atwood

BRIDGET WHELAN

A blog for readers and writers

A blog about the stories we tell each other and how we tell them...

Saturday 15 January 2011

A Small Stone Number 15

Just met for the first time the word mizzle, Cornish for what we Irish call soft rain. Its not falling from the sky rain so much as floating water, mixing with the air to leave seeds of silver in hair and on the gentle down of wool jumpers. Its soft, seditious rain soaking layers of clothes without the owner noticing until they are wet through...

3 comments:

Eliza said...

Mizzle.... what a lovely word, and I know very well that kind of rain. :D It's deceptive and you're not aware, at first, of what a soaking you're getting.

MorningAJ said...

Us Yorkshire folk are familiar with mizzle (it's a cross between mist and drizzle)so I don't think it's a Cornish word. Great word though isn't it?

Back in Scarborough we used to talk about "sea frets" too. They are a kind of wet fog that hangs around on the coast.

BRIDGET said...

Can't remember where I saw mizzle referred to as having Cornish origins but I bet you're right& it is had a far wider usage. D9d Syliva Plath use in in a pom?
Love sea frets!!! Brilliant expression