A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1273 entries
snickelway
A snickelway is a narrow pedestrian passage between buildings, of the kind that threads through the medieval core of York, England, in the dozens: a few feet wide, sometimes roofed by an overhanging upper floor, cutting between streets in a way no map makes obvious. They are the pedestrian shortcuts of a town laid out before anyone was thinking about vehicles.
Etymology
The word was invented in 1983 by Mark Jones for a book about York, built from three older words for the same kind of passage: snicket, a narrow way between fences or walls; ginnel, a passage between buildings; and alleyway. It caught on locally, entered common use in York within a few years, and is now on street signs.
Notes
The older words it was built from are all still current in northern England and each is regional: snicket is Yorkshire, ginnel is Lancashire and the West Riding, jitty is the East Midlands, twitten is Sussex, vennel is Scots, and wynd is Scots and northern English for a narrow winding lane. English has more words for a small passage between buildings than most languages have for anything.