Wowla

John Wells

unread,

Jan 23, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/23/97

to j.w...@ucl.ac.uk

Who knows the word "wowla" or "woula(h)"?

A quotation from Howard Fergus's story "Maroon", in Fergus & Grell, The
Sea
Gull, Plymouth, Montserrat, 1976. A wife complains to her husband about
the state of their house.

"Joey dis woulah house leaking bad. Besides everybody else in de village
done wid woulah house. Wha' mek we have to be back behind everybody? "

A WOULAH house is (was) a house with a thatched roof. Montserratians saw
it
as a sign of poverty, and strove to replace it with galvanize or shingle
or
a modern roof. Pronunciation: begins like "wow!", ends like "(mill)er"
(no
r-sound).

Irish, "Alliouagana Folk" (Plymouth, Montserrat 1985), has the entry
"wowla house" - a
house with a thatched roof.

But what is the etymology of this word? Where does it come from?
Allsopp, in his Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (OUP 1996), has an
entry "wowla", but only for
Belize and meaning (1) a kind of snake, like boa; (2) a cassava-squeezer
- the latter is an "elongated, basket-work cylinder used for squeezing
the juice from grated
cassava thereby expelling the poison". The etymology is given as a
Miskito
(Amerindian) word meaning 'boa'.

Is it possible that an Amerindian word in Belize travelled to the
Leewards, with a semantic shift "boa constrictor" > "cassava squeezer" >
"basketwork, wattle, cane trash for roofing"?

Does anyone know this word from any part of the Caribbean OTHER than
Belize and Montserrat?

John Wells
Phonetics & Linguistics, University College London
j.w...@ucl.ac.uk

Edward Hutson

unread,

Jan 24, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/24/97

to

Friday 24 January 1997

In BARBADOS two similar sounding words are in reasonably common use.They
can be found listed in "Barbadian Dialect" by Frank. A. Collymore,
published by The Barbados National Trust.

"Wullay ... An expression denoting despondency, sadness, grief , etc. as in
'Wullay, wullay, what I going do now mammy dead?' J. Graham Cruickshank in
his 'Black Talk,' 1916, suggests its affinity with the
'weylawey' of Chaucer and the 'waly, waly' of Ramsay."

"Wulloss ... A possible variant of wullay: used much more frequently, often
to express disappointment or disgust, as in 'Wulloss look what you gone and
done now!'"

J.E. Hutson
Alberta
Canada
<ehu...@ibm.net>

----------
> From: John Wells <we...@phon.ucl.ac.uk>
> Newsgroups: soc.culture.caribbean
> Subject: Wowla
> Date: Thursday, January 23, 1997 8:57 AM

Edward Hutson

unread,

Jan 27, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/27/97

to

Monday 28 January 1997

Please excuse me for having replied to this message by posting a new one
(See separate posting re: Wowla). I've only just discovered how to attach a
message to an already existing one!
Edward Hutson.

John Wells <we...@phon.ucl.ac.uk> wrote in article
<32E78A...@phon.ucl.ac.uk>...

Ron Knight

unread,

Jan 28, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/28/97

to

John Wells <we...@phon.ucl.ac.uk> posted:

|Who knows the word "wowla" or "woula(h)"?
|
|A quotation from Howard Fergus's story "Maroon", in Fergus & Grell, The
|Sea
|Gull, Plymouth, Montserrat, 1976. A wife complains to her husband about
|the state of their house.
|
|"Joey dis woulah house leaking bad. Besides everybody else in de village
|done wid woulah house. Wha' mek we have to be back behind everybody? "
|

|A WOULAH house is (was) a house with a thatched roof. [...]

|
|Irish, "Alliouagana Folk" (Plymouth, Montserrat 1985), has the entry
|"wowla house" - a house with a thatched roof.
|
|But what is the etymology of this word? Where does it come from?

Any possibility of a connection with "willow"--meaning the thatching
material? Not the thatching material in the Caribbean of course,
but it could come from an English usage if "willow" is ever used
in describing a thatched house in England.

Just a guess.

Take it easy,
--
Ron Knight (r...@med.unc.edu)
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
I can't speak for UNC-CH, and UNC-CH can't speak for me.
It's better for both of us.

John Wells

unread,

Jan 29, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/29/97

to

Edward Hutson wrote:
>
> Monday 28 January 1997
>
> Please excuse me for having replied to this message by posting a new one
> (See separate posting re: Wowla). I've only just discovered how to attach a
> message to an already existing one!
> Edward Hutson.

Your reposting of my posting about wowla has come up on usenet, but not
your
own posting which you promise in response to it! How about letting me
have
it direct via e-mail? j.w...@ucl.ac.uk

NB your own e-mail address as shown in the header produces an error
message, even if one corrects "ibm.met" to "ibm.net".

John Wells j.w...@ucl.ac.uk