From: Year of Wonder, by Geraldine Brooks

after Sam the miner dies, the narrator comments:

..but they nicked his stowe the day they brought his body out of the mine. ...Jonus has the seam now... he feels he has choused me... its hardly a swindle when the law here time is very plain that those who can not pull a dish of lead from a mine with three nicks may not keep it.


nick i know, (it mean to steal) but stowe and chouse(d) are new!