It's a long while since I heard the verb empt being used in my home place in Co Wexford. It means to pour out, to empty. Once upon a time it was used also in many of England's dialects from Northamptonshire to Somerset, Devon and Cornwall.

It is now teetering on the brink of becoming obsolete in many places such as Staffordshire, where the English Dialect Dictionary recorded,

“As quick as thought they empt the well.”

In Northamptonshire the word was frequently used with the prefix on or un , when employed agriculturally, as "on-empt that load of hay.

The EDD recorded "Empt the bucket" in Somerset, and "Yes, you'd better empt it," in Surrey. Many years ago I heard a farmer's wife near Campile, in south Co Wexford, reprimand a "servant boy"as they were then called, for negleting to empt a cistern in the yard.

Thomas Hardy from Dorset has, "I'll empt my pocket o' this last too,' in Under the Greenwood Tree, published in 1872. Is Hardy read much anymore, I wonder: he was a really fine writer. Hunt's Popular Romances of the West of England , published in 1865, has this from Cornwall: 'Dosmery Pool amid the moors . . . no stream it empt, nor any fill."

Hence empt, adjective, empty, and the phrase emptin cloam , drinking to excess. Cloam is crockery, therefore a cup. From Somerset the EDD recorded: "Work! The work he likth best is emptin'o'cloam, and he'll work to that way anybody."

This empt is an old word, Chaucer employed it in The Canterbury Tales : "Ther-by shal he nat winne, But empte his purs."

Not long ago a Yorkshireman complained in a court of law that the faytor in the dock was the wretch who stole his money while he was having a quiet drink with a friend in a pub.

I read that the word had to be explained to the magistrate who was not, as they used to say in Wexford, agree to the place (not a native).

It means a vagabond, gypsy; also a fortuneteller.

Ainsworth has the word in Rookwood , a treasury of Yorkshire colloquial language, published back in 1834; it was regarded then, as it is now, as slang: "I'll wager a trifle that fire was not lighted by the fayter fellows to count their fingers by." Cotgrave's dictionary has the word in 1612: "Vagabond, a faitour . . . gadding rogue." The Plowman's Tale , c. 1395, has 'Such false faytours . . ."

The word is from the Old French faitor , a deceiver. A marvellous survival, and, I am told, confined to Yorkshire.

wordsweuse@irishtimes.com