HEAVEN help the philologist who is landed (and one will be, one day) with the problem of analysing gissit.

Gissit had been thought to have perished about the time of Dunkirk, but it was heard, as fresh as a daisy, in the Market Place at Evesham on Monday; and all praise to its hardiness.

But what is it?

Small boy, producing a stamped letter from his pocket: “I forgot about this.” Elder boy, dragging the other towards the Post Office: “Gissit.” He might have put it differently. He might have said, not so many years ago, “Gissit yur”. But there was no need of emphasis, in fact.

The small boy knew exactly what he was being told to do, and handed the letter over.

The usage is fascinating because it combines morphological and syntactical interests. It will be found, eventually, in the monumental Linguistic Atlas of England which is at present under construction in the University of Leeds, a work which, kind readers, will have the last say on all these funny little flowers of speech that are purveyed on this page for you every few weeks.

You will not, however, get it for fourpence. In the meantime, therefore, perhaps you may like to know what is said about gissit in that learned work, long in preparation, but still unpublished, the ‘Asum Grammar’. Very well, then: yur thee bist; yur ee guz agyun.

Gissit is one of the oldest imperatives in the Evesham language. At a first glance, it has a hint of the plural, but this is an illusion.

The personal pronoun in the object, which is to be understood and never stated, is always singular; it is always ‘me’, never ‘us’.

Yet there is no such usage as ‘gimmit’, and never way, though it would have been more simply comprehensible. When employed by one person, of course, the first person plural indicates that it is the Pope, the emperor or the editorial writer who is speaking, and the effect is designedly majestic.

With gissit, though, the speaker claims no pomp or circumstance. Why, then, does he say it? There is only one simple answer. It is easier.

Perhaps it is friendlier, too, if lacking in courtesy. “Give it me” is an entirely formal command, without polite preamble. “Please gissit” is impossible because of incongruity. The verb itself is irregular. But the imperitive is always Gissit.