"Are the words policy, an insurance document, and policy, a plan of action, at all related?" John Roche from Waterford city wrote to ask.
The simple answer is no. The word for an insurance document is from Middle French police, meaning certificate. This word's ultimate origin is the Greek apodeixis, meaning a demonstration. The other policy is from Latin politia, administration, from the Greek polis, a city. It is, of course, related to police, cops.
I'm often surprised by the vocabulary of building workers. A Wicklowman recently told me about his fear of the tolters some builders erect; a tolter is an insecure bit of scaffolding, he explained. This ancient word comes from the Old English tealtrian, to stagger, not stand firm. It is, no doubt, related to totter.
Whelm is another old word heard along the east coast. We all use it combined with over-, of course, but whelm is a good word in its own right.
The great dictionaries give the word's primary meaning as "to submerge", but most ignore the word's shades of meaning in dialect. My Wicklow brickie explained that to whelm means to cover something up, bags of cement with a tarpaulin, for instance. The English Dialect Dictionary, which has not recorded the word in Ireland, also gives that meaning, and Jehan Palsgrave's L'esclarcissement de la langue francoyse of 1530 has "I whelme it, to save it from the flyes".
Palsgrave's meaning is still found in Scotland, and in England as far south as Suffolk. A Peterborough woman is recorded in the EDD as having said that she had seven children so small that she could whelm 'em all under a basket.
Whelm is from Middle English whelmen, to turn with the concave side down, a probable fusion of Old English hwielfan and helmian, to cover.
Ann Campbell from Derry heard the expression "It's not worth a thrum" in Gweedore. She had been told since by "a Gaelic scholar" that the word is from Irish trom, the elder tree, deemed useless for woodwork or burning.
Oh dear! A thrum is a weaving term, Ann: the waste end of a warp which cannot be woven. Scott, in Rob Roy, has: "It's a' moonshine in water: waste threads and thrums, as we say." I've heard the word in Dunlewey, famous for its weavers. From Old Norse thromr, the brim, edge, verge.