Gan canny
"Take care; go carefully."
A piece of Geordie (Tyneside, Newcastle-area) dialect built from two words with their own long histories. "Gan," meaning "go," comes from Old English and Old Norse forms of the verb, reflecting the heavy Scandinavian influence on North East England from centuries of Viking settlement. "Canny" has a much broader and older sense in Northern English and Scots than its modern meaning of "shrewd" suggests, historically covering "careful," "nice," "pleasant," and "good," among other senses. Put together, "gan canny" is simply a warm send-off telling someone to go carefully.
Sources: Recorded in dialect dictionaries of North East England; 'canny' documented with its broader Northern English and Scots senses in the Oxford English Dictionary.
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