In my husband’s coat pocket when I took it to the cleaner’s I found a piece of paper that he had brought home from the dentist’s. It contained remarks about the word merry, for his dentist is a well-read man of letters. I should have written about this before Christmas, but it was still hidden in the pocket.
‘Merry is a spectrum word,’ the notes say. ‘At one end is the old northern meaning of “strong” or “brave”; at the other end is the southern meaning of “jolly”, “happy”.’ The northern meaning he says is in the dialect dictionary. I can’t find it in this sense in Joseph Wright’s Dialect Dictionary or in the 10-volume Scottish National Dictionary. No matter.
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In a subsidiary line of inquiry, the dentist ponders the origin of merrythought meaning the wishbone of the Christmas bird.
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