Citations:whatten

See also: Citations:whatn

English citations of whatten

what

• 1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life, vi:

  Whatten you want it for?

• 1863, Taming a shrew, volume 3, page 217:

  When he had finished, the counsel for the defence got up and tried to bother him, and shake him in his testimony. The man, not accustomed to lawyer's ways was incensed. "Tell yo it's truth, ivery word of it. Whatten is a chap to say more?"

• 1864, John Saunders, Abel Drake's Wife: A Novel, page 81: "No, I donna—that is, I don't like the mill.” “And whatten—” Barbara was about to change the word and say “what;” but after her pause she repeated the former phrase emphatically:-“And whatten do you like?” “The army!" “Not surgery, or medicine, or aught of that sort?"
• 1882, Sarah Tytler (Scottish novelist Henrietta Keddie), What She Came Through, page 167:

  "You be fair crazy about Long Dick," said Clem, impatiently dismissing the endless subject, "and it weren't him I came to speak about. It were Joel Wray as I were a thinkin' and a wantin' to tell you on." "And whatten is there in Joel Wray, if you please, as is so worthy of bein' spoke on?" asked Lizzie.

• 1895, Mrs. Robert A. Watson, Under God's Sky: The Story of a Cleft in Marland, page 15:

  "Yo're cracking riddles to-neet. Whatten is it I've forgotten?" he demanded. "Ony thysen, 'Biram. That's all th' riddle. And thou mun find th' answer: I cannot," she answered, holding her shawl about her and her eyes to what she could see of his face.

• 1918, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Posthumous Poems, page 28:

  "O whatten is yonder noise," she said, "That I hear cry on us behind?" "Haud ye by my sleeve now, Burd Margaret, For ye hear naething but the wind."

could be either

• 1888, Sarah Tytler (Scottish novelist Henrietta Keddie), The Blackhall Ghosts, page 215:

  Could any man tell for zertain whatten price Luke Tredinnock had wormed out of that zofty Tom Le Grice, […]

• 1895 (edition of 1901), C. L. Antrobus, Wildersmoor: A Novel, 14:

  Eh, dear! ─ but whatten a job, Mr. Quentin! ─ whatten a job!