Wussers

[Kingfisher4]

Anyone know the origin of the word?  or when / where it was commonly used?  

It appears in several newspapers around 1870s in the Berkshire area but don't want to assume it wasn't used elsewhere.

It's not in the Oxford English Dictionary as a term for a boat.

Thanks 🤞

[MtB]

Thames boats or Kennet boats? 

 

In what context?

 

In what newspapers?!

Being a Berkshire bouy myself we used to use the term "wuss" to mean someone timid, or scared of things they didn't need to be. 

 

 

[Chris Lowe]

28 minutes ago, MtB said:

Being a Berkshire bouy myself we used to use the term "wuss" to mean someone timid, or scared of things they didn't need to be. 

That would be my meaning as well, coming from Windsor.

[Tony Brooks]

42 minutes ago, MtB said:

Thames boats or Kennet boats? 

 

In what context?

 

In what newspapers?!

Being a Berkshire bouy myself we used to use the term "wuss" to mean someone timid, or scared of things they didn't need to be. 

 

 

 

Ditto, from Burnham

[Guest]

Ditto from the North East

[Jerra]

45 minutes ago, Chris Lowe said:

That would be my meaning as well, coming from Windsor.

And mine coming from Cumbria

[magnetman]

And mine coming from Wales, Scotland, Hampshire, Sussex and Surrey as a kid. 

 

Pronounced like puss not pus. 

 

 

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, MtB said:

Being a Berkshire bouy myself we used to use the term "wuss" to mean someone timid, or scared of things they didn't need to be. 

 

 

Same in my part of the world  often preceded by Big Wuss

[Chris M Jones]

The late David Blagrove, who was from the Berkshire area, used to mention Wussers! He wrote that the term for a narrow boat on the Thames and associated canals (other than the Oxford Canal) was Wussers or Woossers. “It is just conceivable that the first narrow boats seen on the river arrived from Worcestershire, hence the name.” This is just speculation of course.

 

Fred S Thacker in his book The Thames Highway said when writing about the tonnage carried in boats: "The least, (tons carried are in boats) called worsers, are of thirty, or rather less. He (a man named S C Hall in 1859) states that worsers first came on to the River from the Coventry Canal. This is borne out by what a jolly great Reading man told me in 1911; that worsers are two canal boats lashed together side by side.” Despite this Thacker didn’t state that actual meaning of Worser.

[MtB]

Now that would make sense, given Worcester is pronounced "wooster". A contraction of "wooster" could easily be "woosser" in just the same way "Josher" is a contraction of Joshua. 

 

 

 

So wusser boats might easily have once been "Worcester boats". 

 

 

[David Mack]

2 hours ago, MtB said:

Being a Berkshire bouy myself we used to use the term "wuss" to mean someone timid, or scared of things they didn't need to be. 

The OED seems confused on that one.

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/wuss_n2 says:

"The earliest known use of the noun wuss is in the 1970s.

OED's earliest evidence for wuss is from 1976, in Campus Slang.

wuss is of uncertain origin. Perhaps formed within English, by blending.

Etymons: wimp n.2, puss n.1

Whereas https://www.oed.com/dictionary/wuss_adj says:

"The earliest known use of the word wuss is in the 1860s.

OED's earliest evidence for wuss is from 1862, in a diary entry by Arthur Munby, diarist and civil servant.

wuss is a variant or alteration of another lexical item.

Etymons: worse adj. & n.

I'm pretty sure I came across the term before the 70s, so I'd go with the earlier date, although the combination of wimp and puss rings true. (But doesn't help with 'wussers').

[beerbeerbeerbeerbeer]

1 hour ago, magnetman said:

And mine coming from Wales, Scotland, Hampshire, Sussex and Surrey as a kid. 

 

Pronounced like puss not pus. 

 

 

pronounced like buzz,

 

as in “get a shift on you wuzz or you’ll miss the buzz”

 

[Kingfisher4]

5 hours ago, Chris M Jones said:

The late David Blagrove, who was from the Berkshire area, used to mention Wussers! He wrote that the term for a narrow boat on the Thames and associated canals (other than the Oxford Canal) was Wussers or Woossers. “It is just conceivable that the first narrow boats seen on the river arrived from Worcestershire, hence the name.” This is just speculation of course.

 

Fred S Thacker in his book The Thames Highway said when writing about the tonnage carried in boats: "The least, (tons carried are in boats) called worsers, are of thirty, or rather less. He (a man named S C Hall in 1859) states that worsers first came on to the River from the Coventry Canal. This is borne out by what a jolly great Reading man told me in 1911; that worsers are two canal boats lashed together side by side.” Despite this Thacker didn’t state that actual meaning of Worser.

Brilliant!  Thank you very much.  I knew I'd read something somewhere.

Someone reminiscing in the Newbury Weekly News in 1878 wrote "A couple of Mr. John Flint’s, or Mr. Evans senior’s, or the late Daniel New’s ‘wussers’, strung together as close as the Siamese Twins, are returning perhaps with loads of the much-prized Newcastle coals that had been ‘whipped’ from the northern coal-hulks in the port of London..."  This sounds like wussers were narrowboats, which fits with your two quotes.

Then I found another reference which calls a Kennet barge a wusser.  But journalists are not always accurate...!

 

[John Brightley]

On 31/12/2023 at 15:59, Chris M Jones said:

The late David Blagrove, who was from the Berkshire area, used to mention Wussers! He wrote that the term for a narrow boat on the Thames and associated canals (other than the Oxford Canal) was Wussers or Woossers. “It is just conceivable that the first narrow boats seen on the river arrived from Worcestershire, hence the name.” This is just speculation of course.

 

Fred S Thacker in his book The Thames Highway said when writing about the tonnage carried in boats: "The least, (tons carried are in boats) called worsers, are of thirty, or rather less. He (a man named S C Hall in 1859) states that worsers first came on to the River from the Coventry Canal. This is borne out by what a jolly great Reading man told me in 1911; that worsers are two canal boats lashed together side by side.” Despite this Thacker didn’t state that actual meaning of Worser.

Could there be any connection with Worsey's, boatbuilders in Tipton and Birmingham ? http://allensregister.com/bp173_Worsey.php

[magpie patrick]

On 31/12/2023 at 15:59, Chris M Jones said:

The late David Blagrove, who was from the Berkshire area, used to mention Wussers! He wrote that the term for a narrow boat on the Thames and associated canals (other than the Oxford Canal) was Wussers or Woossers. “It is just conceivable that the first narrow boats seen on the river arrived from Worcestershire, hence the name.” This is just speculation of course.

 

This is possible as the first through route to connect was the Thames and Severn Canal, which was the first, and briefly the only, through route between Manchester, the Midlands and London/Oxford. This would open the upper and middle Thames to a number of craft that were unfamiliar to the regular users of the river. 

[Chris M Jones]

One writer on Thames history has said barges were built according to the individual requirements of the owner, and ‘worsers’ or ‘wussers’ was a term for very small Thames barges built with a capacity of just 20 to 30 tons, and powered by a mast and square sail or towed. These were not narrow boats but built for river use only, unless they could fit into the Thames & Severn locks or wide Oxford canal lock at Hythe Bridge. 

 

Narrow boats coming onto the Thames from the new ‘cuts’ carried a similar capacity so its not inconceivable that the term ‘wusser’ passed to these narrow boats as well as they became more commonly seen. If this is true then the term ‘worsers’ or ‘wussers’ could be older than the narrow boats.