dial. Forms: 6 pl. warpelles, warples, 7 whaple, 7– whapple, 9 wapple, waffel, warple, worple, wopple. [Of obscure origin; perh. repr. an OE. *wyrpel or *wierpel f. the root of WARP v. Cf. the place-name Warplesdon (Surrey).] A green lane, a bridle-road. Chiefly in comb. warple-road, -way; warple-gate, a gate on a bridle-road (Eng. Dial. Dict.).
1565. Extr. Crt. Rolls of Manor of Wimbledon (1866), 128. Ordinacio pro Warpelles. Cum ad ultimam Curiam Generalem hic tentam ordinatum fuit de exponendis, anglice Warples, in Communibus campis de Wimbledon [etc.].
1658. in Sussex Archæol. Coll. (1871), XXIII. 253. One whaple or bridle way sett forth … through the premises leading from Newbridge Mill.
1674. Ray, S. & E. C. Words, 79. A Whapple way, i. e. where a cart and horses cannot pass, but horses only.
1704. R. Stapley, Diary, in Sussex Archæol. Collect., II. 126. Ye great oake yt stood in ye lane, going ye whapple way to Bolney from Hickstead, was cut down.
1860. J. W. Warter, Seaboard & Down, II. 34. You ought to have kept to the wopple road.
1868. Gloss. Sussex Words, in Hurst, Horsham (1889), Whapple-way. A public bridle path, which went through fields, woods, and farms.
1886. Law Rep., 31 Chanc. Div. 680. There was an old way or track, formerly known as a warple way, leading from the Uxbridge Road: it was about ten feet wide and was not metalled.
1893. Times, 21 March, 13/3. A triangular plot of land in Acton which is bounded on the north and north-west by a cart road or ‘warple way.’ Ibid., 13/4. There existed an old ‘warple way’ or easement (i.e., a rough, unmade cart track used by the occupying owners or tenants for agricultural purposes, as the removal of crops or conveyance of manure) across the site of the railway.
