The jazz and beat slang about being hip to the groove comes from the Irish “tuig” – or, more accurately, “dtuig”, as in “an dtuigeann tú?” the “d” is an eclipsis, or urú, before the “t” of “tuigeann” (“understand”). The illegal period of drinking in a closed pub after hours that Saoirse Ronan blew the cover on when she tried to explain the concept to Jimmy Fallon last year. In the 1890s the English comic paper Nuggets featured an Irish immigrant family called the Hooligans, depicted in a typically pejorative way. This almost certainly comes from a twist on the surname Hoolihan. GobĪ casual Irish word for “mouth” (the toast “gob fliuch”, for example) also used for “beak”. A disposition, a state of being, a sin to not be any, the craic – like many quintessentially Irish things, from St Patrick to chippers – isn’t Irish at all but is very much our own.įrom the Irish “maith”, meaning “good” (but also “well” and “like”), the term for someone’s girlfriend. “Craic” journeyed from Middle English (“crak”) via Shakespeare to 18th-century Scotland (both crack) and was then adopted into Hiberno-English in the mid-20th century and given its Gaelic spelling. Internet slang now occasionally reinterprets it as the acronym for “sad and pathetic”. SapĮighteenth- and 19th-century Scottish and English schoolboy slang (“sapskull”, “saphead”) that the Irish took and shortened.
The Middle English word “bigrucchen” meant “to grumble about” the Irish made “begrudge” a noun. BegrudgeryĪpparently still the default Irish disposition when greeted with another’s success and happiness.
Conor Cruise O’Brien coined it as his pithy take on Charlie Haughey’s response to the discovery of the murderer Malcolm Macarthur in the attorney general’s home in 1982. The acronym for “grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented” can now refer to any political or legal wrangling. Charlie Haughey, whose response to the discovery of the murderer Malcolm Macarthur in the attorney general’s home, in 1982, Conor Cruise O’Brien turned into the acronym. Perhaps nowhere was the concept of the shebeen more embraced than in South African townships, where they are an important part of the social and cultural landscape.Ī history of Ireland in our favourite words: 2 – Gubu. 1. Shebeenįrom the Irish “síbín”, this is the first of many words in this list related to general divilment and rúla búla. Which words did the Irish invent for our own use, and which ones travelled around the globe? From words emerging from the Irish language via Hiberno-English classics to unexpected words coined by Irish people, this history of Ireland in 90 words covers everything from anatomy and gambling to avocados.
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