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Witʹham

.

You were born, I suppose, at Little Witham. A reproof to a noodle. The pun, of course, is on little wit. Witham is in Lincolnshire.

“I will be sworn she was not born at Wittham, for Gaffer Gibbs … says she could not turn up a single lesson like a Christian.”—Sir Walter Scott Heart of Mid-Lothian, chap. xxxii.

Puns of this sort are very common. (See Bedfordshire, Nod, Dunce, Cripplegate, Shanksʹ Nag, etc.)

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.