30 JANUARY 1892, Page 31

" TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES."

[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR"]

SIR,—In the interest of dictionary-makers, may I be allowed to state that the apparently coarse word used by the heroine of " Tess of the D'Urbervilles " (Vol. I., p. 127, line 16), from which you draw an inference in your review of that novel, has ceased in Somerset, Dorset, &c., to carry with it the coarse idea of its root-meaning, being spoken by the most modest to imply simply a company of slatternly, bickering, and generally unpleasant women P—I am, Sir, &c., C. L. H.