newts

[woolleysheep]

i have always known newts to be askers ,is this a local name to North Staffordsire and South cheshire.

[kaztuz]

Must be - I am from Derbyshire/Leicestershire and we know them as newts.

[Quizmonster]

It has been a common usage in the West Midlands dialect since the 1600s.

[paddywak]

Never heard them called askers before but they are sometimes called Efts . I'm in Notts by the way

[woolleysheep]

we use to find them in what we called "the asker pit"

[Quizmonster]

An 'ask' was the common name for a newt in Scotland and northern England as long ago as the 14th century. It came from Old English 'athexe' before getting worn down to 'ask'. Thereafter, people in the West Midlands area obviously decided to start building it up again by adding '-er'!

It is worth noting perhaps that 'newt' originated as a 'mistake', whereby people moved the 'n' from 'an ewt' and made it 'a newt'. In the opposite way, they changed 'a nadder' to 'an adder' (the snake). Both 'ewt' and 'newt' are variants of 'eft', which is the oldest of all the words involved here.