# pucksy
## English
### Pronunciation

* IPA: /ˈpʌksi/

### Etymology 1

Unclear. The English Dialect Dictionary and Dictionary of the Scots Language mention a northeastern Scottish (Banff) dialectal word pouk "hole in the ground, usually waterlogged or marshy" which could be related (compare also pughole); the DSL considers that pouk to be the same word as the verb pouk (“to poke, to thrust”), and notes that in Banff pouk also means "dig or excavate in a careless, clumsy way, damage by excavation or holing". Alternatively, compare pock (“pit”). (In the 1800s, Halliwell-Phillipps speculated that the mires might be named in reference to the folk belief that pucksies/pucks (“mischievous or hostile spirits”) led travelers astray, potentially into bogs.

#### Noun

pucksy (plural pucksies)
* (southwestern England, possibly obsolete) An area of miry or swampy ground; a place (in a road, field, etc) where a spring rises, or where rain pools, and keeps the ground miry.
** For quotations using this term, see Citations:pucksy.
** For more quotations using this term, see Citations:pucksey.
** For more quotations using this term, see Citations:puxy.
** 1821, Benjamin Wingrove, Remarks on a Bill Now Before Parliament, to Amend the General Laws for Regulating Turnpike-roads: in which are Introduced, Strictures on the Opinions of Mr. M'Adam, on the Subject of Roads: And to which are Added, Suggestions, for the Consideration of the Legislature, on Various Points Essential to the Perfection of the Road System, page 19:In consequence of this neglect, a great part of these roads are subjected to a frightful disease, locally denominated pucksies; these are quagmires, arising from the weak state of the road, which, having no support left, admits the water to sink through, or, in case of springs, to arise from, a bad subsoil of various depth and quality, […]
** 1822, Sporting Magazine, page 246:[…] when on crossing at the head of the string of bogs before-mentioned, the fore-feet of my Hampshire purchase got into a puxy, as some call it, and how they were extricated I know not, unless, as some of the party would afterwards have it, "the hind feet kindly came to their relief immediately, and forcibly drove them out."
** 1911, Edward Sydney Tylee, The Witch Ladder: A Story of Somerset in the Later Days of Victoria, page 248:"I'm a bit splashed, I know; but that's the fault of the weather and the pucksies in Deep Lane."
** 1925, Surveyor and Municipal and County Engineer, volume 68, page 285:The effect of a very small quantity of subsoil water upon a road on some soils is remarkable; the traffic pushes the haunches down, and the margins will heave up to a surprising extent. Occasionally, after a period of continuous wet weather, the underground water passages become overcharged, and springs or "puxies" break in the road. The effect of this is immediate where soil is fine sand overlying sandstone, and the author has frequently seen what was a strong solid road turned into a quicksand over which no traffic could pass, and upon which it was difficult to walk without sinking to some depth.
** 1932, Hugh Norris, Charles Herbert Mayo, Frederic William Weaver, Notes & Queries for Somerset and Dorset:[…] for wood to lay in the puxy at Dideway for letting out water from ye road between Stapleton and Martock […]

##### Alternative forms

* pucksey, puxy

#### References

* Joseph Wright, editor (1903), “PUXY”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volume IV (M–Q), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.
* ↑ Joseph Wright, editor (1903), “POUK”, in The English Dialect Dictionary: […], volume IV (M–Q), London: Henry Frowde, […], publisher to the English Dialect Society, […]; New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC.
* ↑ “pouk”, in The Dictionary of the Scots Language, Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries, 2004–present, →OCLC.
* ↑ The DSL quotes the line "magistrates appoint a moss grieve and appoint that none pouk or pott the mosses or cast up the lairs" from William Cramond's Annals of Cullen.
* ↑ Gillian Mary Edwards, Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck: Fairy Names and Natures (1974), page 150: "From the same parts he gives the word pucksy, a quagmire, 'possibly from Puck, who led night-wanderers into bogs'. On Dartmoor they don't jump from frying-pans into fires; they say, 'He got out of the muxy (mud or mire) and fell into the pucksy.'" Quoting James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, A dictionary of archaic and provincial words (1881), page 650.

### Etymology 2

From puck.

#### Noun

pucksy (plural pucksies)
* A puck (mischievous or hostile spirit) or pixie.
** For quotations using this term, see Citations:pucksy.

##### Alternative forms

* puxy