pucksy
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: /ˈpʌksi/
Forms: form: pucksies
form: pucksey
form: puxy
Etymology: 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.
Senses: examples: text: For quotations using this term, see Citations:pucksy.
text: 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, […]
ref: 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:
text: […] 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."
ref: 1822, Sporting Magazine, page 246:
text: "I'm a bit splashed, I know; but that's the fault of the weather and the pucksies in Deep Lane."
ref: 1911, Edward Sydney Tylee, The Witch Ladder: A Story of Somerset in the Later Days of Victoria, page 248:
text: 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.
ref: 1925, Surveyor and Municipal and County Engineer, volume 68, page 285:
text: […] for wood to lay in the puxy at Dideway for letting out water from ye road between Stapleton and Martock […]
ref: 1932, Hugh Norris, Charles Herbert Mayo, Frederic William Weaver, Notes & Queries for Somerset and Dorset:
glosses: 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.