yedder

English

Pronunciation

• (rhotic) IPA^(key): /ˈjɛdɚ/, /ˈjɛðɚ/
• (non-rhotic) IPA^(key): /ˈjɛdə/, /ˈjɛðə/

Noun

yedder (plural yedders)

1. (UK dialectal) Alternative form of edder (“flexible wood used in binding hedge stakes”)
   • 1855, Francis Kildale Robinson, A Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases: Collected in Whitby and the Neighbourhood. With Examples of Their Colloquial Use, and Allusions to Local Customs and Trditions, page 129:

     […] you shall set your stakes at the brim of the water, each a yard apart, and so yedder them with your yedders, and so stake them with your strut stowers, that they may stand three tides without removing by the force thereof.

   • 1876, Dickinson, Cumbr., page 242:

     they whack wi' their yedders

   • 1897, Horne's Guide to Whitby, Profusely Illustrated: Giving a Detailed Description of Places of Interest, Streets, Roads and Footpaths in and Around Whitby, page 28:

     Hence the request that they should repair to the wood on Ascension Eve to prepare their stakes, their stowers, and their yedders, and bring them on their backs to the place fixed upon for their planting by "nine in the morning." Of course, Ascension Day is determined by Easter, which is regulated by the moon, and the moon regulates the tides […]

   • 2016 November 1, Allison Littlewood, The Hidden People, Jo Fletcher Books, →ISBN:

     "But 'e's biddable as a yedder, an' never [has] a fixed idea of 'is own. I dun't rightly think 'e's ever called owt else.” She realised my confusion. “A yedder's weaved through a stake to make a fence or bind an 'edge, you see. It bends this way an' that […]"

Verb

yedder (third-person singular simple present yedders, present participle yeddering, simple past and past participle yeddered)

1. (UK dialectal) Alternative form of edder
   • 1855, Francis Kildale Robinson, A Glossary of Yorkshire Words and Phrases: Collected in Whitby and the Neighbourhood. With Examples of Their Colloquial Use, and Allusions to Local Customs and Trditions, page 129:

     […] you shall set your stakes at the brim of the water, each a yard apart, and so yedder them with your yedders, and so stake them with your strut stowers, that they may stand three tides without removing by the force thereof.

Further reading

• 1892, Marmaduke Charles Frederick Morris, Yorkshire Folk-talk: With Characteristics of Those who Speak it in the North and East Ridings, page 400:

  Yedder, n. C. (pr. yether, th soft). A pliant twig or young shoot in a hedge, which may conveniently be utilised for strengthening a fence by twisting it in and out along perpendicular stakes. Hedging down in this fashion is said to be i stake an' yedder, and the expression nowther a stake nor a yedder signifies the same as 'neither one thing nor the other,' and is frequently applied in that sense to a person of whom nothing can be made and who succeeds at no kind of work.