God forgive me, I’ve written a listicle. Below are ten words and usages in Irish English (or Hiberno-English*) that you mightn’t be familiar with unless you’re a Sentence first veteran, a dialect scholar, or of course Irish, or Irishish.
Some were borrowed from Irish and became part of Irish English. Others are English words with meanings peculiar (or mostly so) to Ireland. What follows is just a summary, but each word links to a post I’ve written with more detail, notes on pronunciation, examples from literature and real life, and so on.
1. Smacht is a noun loaned from Irish meaning control, discipline, or order. You might put smacht on something or someone, like an untidy room or an unruly team.
2. Moryah has various spellings all based on the Irish phrase mar dhea. It’s an ironic or sceptical interjection used to cast doubt or mild derision on an assertion.
3. Give out in Ireland commonly means to scold or complain: You can give out to someone, or just give out. It’s often intensified in different ways, e.g. He was giving out stink to them.
4. Asthore again comes from Irish: a stór is a term of endearment literally meaning treasure in the vocative case.
5. Hames means mess, and is usually used in the phrase make a hames of something. There’s an implication that the mess arose through carelessness or ineptitude.
6. Cat is used as an adjective in Ireland to mean awful or terrible. All sorts of things – from bad weather to the state of the country – might be described as cat. I realised only recently how weird this is.
7. Yoke is a very handy yoke altogether. It’s a placeholder word, used informally to refer to an unspecified object or indescribable person. It can also be a root in more elaborate placeholders such as yokeamabob.
8. Thick in Irish English can mean angry – either stubborn and sullen or belligerent and argumentative. It’s often intensified by fierce or pure (“very”): She got pure thick with me.
9. and 10. Acushla machree, another poetic term of endearment, is anglicised from the Irish a cuisle mo chroí “pulse [or beat] of my heart”. You see it more in old texts and songs than contemporary usage.
Obviously some of these are current in Irish, not just Irish English. And words should be usages. But a listicle header is no place for nuance.
Update: In a follow-up post, ‘12 words peculiar to Irish English‘, I look at plámás, sleeveen, amn’t, notions, fooster, bulling, oxter, fierce, till, feck, cnáimhseáil, and the after perfect.
*
* Some scholars distinguish between these terms. I’ll write about that another time.
Sentence first 
Good post! need more time to digest it though….
Delightful!
In the North we give off rather than giving out.
@Stan… I’d surmise that some Irish folk would also use the word “thick”, as we do on this side of the briny, to describe someone who was a tad dim-witted, or metaphorically speaking, playing w/ a few cards short of a full deck?
Your Irish-English definition of “thick” is a new one for me. Thanks for that, and all the others on your “listicle”… another ‘new one’ on me, as well… a clever portmanteau of “list” and “article”.
I had the same response to “thick” — I kept waiting for the mention of dim-witted… Is it ever used in that way in Irish English? (A few sandwiches short of a picnic?)
Ya we’d use “thick” in a stupid sense too …. but not in the same way. If you said “he was thick” you’d mean stupid. If you said “he got thick with me” or “he was being thick” you’d mean the “being difficult” sense of the word.
Being, as I am, married to a Dubliner I have learnt a few of these words, and some, such as hames, have entered my vocabulary. Others that I have found useful are ‘plamas’, ‘grand’ and ‘your man’. However, I have never become comfortable with the Irish use of cute, and I cause some confusion when I call a sweet child ‘cute’.
Conversly, after nearly 30 years in the country my ‘missus’ still struggles with some of the complexities of Australian-English.
This weekend I spent a great deal of time trying to understand the meaning and proper usage of summat. {I’m quite sure I still have it wrong, but learning is always fun. ;) } Not on your listicle, and (I believe) British rather than Irish, but I found myself wondering if you’d written summat about summat while I was trying to figure out just what to do with that word. :)
Mrs. Fever, while I can’t speak for Irish English, from my time in England, I gather that “summat” is a variant of “somewhat.”
‘Summat’ = something. Not used in Ireland. Never used to mean ‘somewhat’ in modern dialect; always ‘something’.
Source? :)
@annette.c.boehm I’ve lived in Ireland all my life and I can confirm Table Mat is correct.
Thanks! :)
me too …. I’m irish …. this is never used in Ireland
Its north english dialect for something, heard all the time amongst native speakers in Yorkshire, Lancashire, Northumberland etc
This is fascinating! Thank you! My only problem with fascinating lists like this is I want to add them to my own vocabulary and I’m not sure how! :)
At first glance, “mar dhea” looks a lot like “Mother of God” to me — but that may be way off. :) I read the linked post and it doesn’t mention anything like it.
Reblogged this on Ilene Locke and commented:
Get in touch with my Irish side?! Well.
To paraphrase Josh Homme: shhh… I’m touching it right now.
This is freakin’ great! I’m not god, but you’re totally doing the ‘listicle’ thing right. Nice one. :)
ksfinblog: Thank you.
Claire: Glad you enjoyed it!
The Beer Nut: I’ve heard that version now and then.
Alex: Indeed we do. In the earlier post on thick I mentioned that we also use it as a noun to mean a stupid person (though I don’t, myself).
Annette: Yes, thick = “dim-witted” is common in that sense too. But it’s not peculiar to Irish English, so I ignored it here. Dhea is very similar to Dhia, the lenited form of Dia “God”, but it’s just coincidence.
seajay23: Plámás will definitely feature (eventually) in part 2 of this series; grand is a good one too, but I haven’t written about it yet. Similar to your man is the usefully gender-neutral phrase your one, sometimes “your wan”.
Mrs Fever: I haven’t written about it, sorry. As you’ve probably deduced, it means “something” or “somewhat”, and is an old (and now dialectal) form of the latter.
Jace: You’re welcome! You can just start using them once you’ve grasped how they work. Browse the older posts for more examples of usage, or ask about any in particular you’re interested in.
mutternummern: Thank you! That’s all the encouragement I needed.
Thanks, Stan! I never knew that ‘hames’ was peculiarly Irish; do we know its origin? Is it the word meaning ‘yoke’ (the other kind of yoke)?
In the movie ‘Million Dollar Baby’, Clint Eastwood’s character gives Hilary Swank’s character the nickname ‘Mo Chuisle’, which appears on her boxing robe (according to Wikipedia, spelled incorrectly as “mo cuishle”). Just before the end of the movie (no spoilers), he explains the meaning, which Wikipedia renders as ‘Irish for “my darling, and my blood” (literally, “my pulse”)’.
We had a maths teacher in secondary school (1990s Ennis) who used to say: “If you don’t settle down, I’ll get thick with you!” This implied that violence would be done to the student in question if he didn’t modify his behavior. I’ve also heard “thick with the drink” i.e., cantankerous or rotten drunk!
The cat hames I made of a yoke
Made acushla machree thick as oak.
When asthore gave out stink
I put smacht in a blink…
Moryah. For that fourth line’s a joke.
I regret the lack of room for an “on” (or “on it”) after “smacht”. I have no idea if I can get away with that, or if there’s a solution that would be obvious if I actually knew how to use the words.
I don’t think it’s a real listicle unless you put the words on nine or ten separate pages with forward and back links (and ads on each page, of course).
Summat is just a pronunciation spelling of somewhat, which has always meant ‘something’. However, it’s now more restricted than something in the standard language; the main current use is as an adverb meaning ‘to some degree’, usually a small degree. Something no longer occupies this semantic territory. although “The scarcely ambiguous answer was something softened the following day” (1856) doesn’t feel all that strange to me. In measurements, I can say either something or somewhat less than an hour.
The thing that set my mind to wondering was a song lyric from a Brit band: “the type [of fear] that sticks around like summat in your teeth”.
Something softened the following day? As metaphors go… Eeeeuw.
Thanks for the info. :)
I’ve been practicing to implement “cat malojan/melodeon” since reading it in one of your earlier posts. Not that anyone else in Minnesota uses it.
Table Mat: I’ve heard summat in Ireland, though not from Irish people. Absolutes invite contradiction.
Clodagh: The origin of Hiberno-English hames is uncertain; my earlier post on the word offers some speculation.
David: I haven’t seen that film. Wikipedia’s translation is loose but fairly accurate.
Ultan: He was giving out! That’s a good point about thick; it often accompanies stubborn or argumentative drunkenness.
Adrian: I wouldn’t worry about solving it: as a nonsense limerick it works just fine.
John: That’s a nice clarification of summat. Your “something softened” line does read strangely to me, for the record.
Christian: Maybe you’ll start a trend.
Checking again, Clint Eastwood’s character is named Frankie Dunn, which name might be Irish, or might be from various other parts of the British Isles. Hilary Swank’s character is named Maggie Fitzgerald, which I guess is meant to evoke Irish ancestry.
Had to mention: watching ‘Everlasting Piece’ and George summarizes their situation by saying: ‘It’s all cat’. Glad I’d just read this post earlier, all caught up now!
We also use ‘Thick’ when we think someone is stupid as in ‘Yis are quare thick so yis are’! ‘You (plural) are uncommonly stupid so you are! ‘ Quare means queer (strange, weird) but has other meanings in a sentence too, such as in the above example!
David: Coincidentally, I was talking to my brother yesterday about the surname Dunne. It (and Dunn) derive from Irish/Scottish donn “brown”, presumably on account of certain people having brown hair or a dark complexion. (Or perhaps in some cases being from a place with donn or dún “fort” in its name.)
Claire: This is good to know! I had no idea the usage had made it into the movies.
gaiamethod: Quare is an interesting case – the way its meaning in Ireland is often disambiguated through the vowel sound. I’ll try to write about this sometime.
This post made me think of the similarities between Irish English and NZE. Both countries have similar populations and an indigenous language which is (at the very least) not in the most robust of health but has worked itself into the local English to an extent that clearly differentiates the country’s English from that of much larger and more culturally dominant neighbours. In the case of NZE, even while Māori remains on life support, its influence on English here is getting stronger and stronger and helping mark NZE as ever more distinct from AusEng
That’s an interesting comparison, Stuart. It’s somehow heartening that Māori’s influence extends into English and helps characterise NZ dialects of the dominant language.
Reblogged this on Alessandra Ribolini // Translator (EN/ES>IT) and commented:
Getting ready for July :-)
Fascinating. Thank you ,Stan. And to all who commented.
Morya is from ‘mar ó dhia’ = as if from God
A Hames = the wooden forms that give shape to the horse’s collar.
Claude: Merci, mon amie, pour lire.
ombhurbhuva: What’s your source for the first assertion? The authorities I consulted make no mention of Dia. Nor is the etymology of Hiberno-English hames known for certain, though the wooden harness origin is quite possible.
Morya: I didn’t know there was any doubt about that. The expression morya/mar ó dhia is used in the same context with the exact same sense. To the anglophone ear they sound alike.
Hames: Conjectural of course but we can easily imagine one man showing a twisted piece of lumber to another:
What’ll we do with this?
Make a hames out of it.
So then any misshapen botched piece of work.
Michael
That sense of ‘cat’ as pejorative appears in late 19th century/early 20th century English school stories, so it may have been slang that just survived longer in Ireland.
It could be that, Sophia. If you can quote or point me to any examples, I’d be interested to hear them.
Very helpful; I am new to this site, any chance of a pronounciation guide for non-Hibernians/Caledonians?
Thank you, TLS. The older posts that are linked to at each entry provide notes on pronunciation, where necessary. If you’re still uncertain about any in particular, feel free to ask.
I’ve often wondered if “cat”, in the sense of a complete mess or a totally unsatisfactory situation, is short for “catastrophic”?
It may be, Joe. I mention the possibility, among others, in my post about this use of cat.
[…] modest differences in the dialects’ grammar, phonology, and vocabulary. Many of these are due to the strong influence here of the Irish language, which has […]
Do the Irish ever use the word ” were” for “was”?
As in “It were the fatty foods that did him in.”
Nope. Not an Irish thing. Try Yorkshire :)
Alissa: As the Beer Nut says, it’s not a feature of Irish English. For a handy overview of the dialect, see this paper (PDF) by Raymond Hickey.
Is latchico one to add to the list? Can only remember hearing my father use it – an insult said with affection – as in,’you pair of latchios’ after my sister and I had messed something up, attempted something and failed…
Bridget: Yes, it’s definitely peculiar to Irish English. I hear it the odd time too. Its etymology is unknown, though several theories have been advanced.
I’ve heard “yoke” used as slang for ecstasy tablets in Dublin. Can’t comment as to the regularity, age, or origin of this usage, however.
It’s used in the west too, and presumably other parts of the country. I don’t know its age or origins either, but it’s at least 20 years old.
[…] what about other English-speaking countries? How many people would be confused by an Irishman telling them he's had a cat day because his professor gave out stink to him? Or by a […]
[…] is part 2 in an occasional series. The first instalment, ‘10 words used only in Irish English’, features smacht, moryah, give out, asthore, hames, cat, yoke, thick, and acushla machree (which […]
[…] expresión “give out” para significar “scold” o “complain” es irlandesa, y nadie me entenderá si la uso fuera. Vaya por dios […]
Perhaps there’s something like ‘mar dhea’ in–dated & teen-y, I suspect–US English: ‘Not’ when it negates what immediately precedes it. ‘He’s not all well, mar dhea’; ‘ He’s really really sick. Not.’
I’m curious–is ‘cat’ still around? Don’t remember having heard it used in that way for years.
Oh aye, still used.
Yes, slang Not! (which I mentioned in a recent post on film catchphrases for Macmillan Dictionary) is a bit like mar dhea in meaning and syntax. I would say it’s more straightforward, though, whereas the Irish phrase can carry subtle implications about character and context. It can also occasionally go before the thing being negated.
Cat, as the Beer Nut confirms, is still around. I see, hear, and use it now and then.
‘Hames’, as is mentioned above, is the wooden or rigid component of the collar that forms part of the harness for a horse. I understand that it was quite difficult to attach, you had to put a kind of pin in through at the bottom and fasten the two parts together . Someone who hadn’t yet learnt how to do it properly and was obviously making a mess of it, soon found himself being mocked for his lack of expertise.
There are lots of examples of expressions that are in use in Irish English that obviously come directly from Irish. What is interesting about this is that very often, the person using them has no Irish and/or hasn’t ever been exposed to it. You find similar situations elsewhere, for example in Marseille, where there’s a strong influence of the Provençale language on the way people speak, even if they have never spoken Provençal. It’s a bit like geology, the earlier language is considered as an underlying linguistic layer. I find myself confronted with expressions such as – And the next minute the two eyes got round in his head with the dint of surprise. – and – It went hard with him, but he took his feet safe from them in the end. Both of these are taken from Folktales from the Irish Countryside by Kevin Danaher. Alan Titley has said recently that this kind of thing is now out of fashion and new forms of Irish English are less influenced by Irish.
Yes, linguistic scholars report a process of ‘supraregionalisation’ in Irish English in which regional dialect features have been declining in use. Raymond Hickey, for example, describes it as a type of language change whose actuation ‘is probably triggered by a consciousness of the provinciality of one’s own language and the presence of more mainstream varieties’. Over the course of a few generations the shift can be significant.
Once, when driving (in the Republic) I said to my girlfriend at the time (from the North) that I was going to pass out. I meant to overtake but she got scared. Only then did I realize how “passing out in traffic” must sound to someone not used to the phrase. Not sure if it is Irish based or its origin.
That must have been briefly terrifying for her! I hadn’t thought of pass out as an Irishism before, and I don’t hear it nearly as often as I used to. Its transitive use (e.g., ‘pass out that truck’) avoids the ambiguity with ‘faint’, though not necessarily the uncertainty about its meaning if the listener is unfamiliar with it. Bernard Share’s Slanguage (a dictionary of informal Irish English) has a brief entry on it, with a citation from 1964, but no hint on its origin.
[…] expressions that are used there. American English is not the same as British English, and English vocabulary in Ireland has its own particularities too. So, if you come to Ireland, you will hear a few words that are […]
Hello,
Thanks a lot for this.
Most of these words are used by my mother. We have never discussed their meaning so I had assumed from context over the years. She was born in 1947 and refers to vegan or scandi dishes cooked by me as prakus. Is that word peculiar to her family? Have not heard it from anyone else. Then again my mother is the only Irish person I know.
You’re welcome, Patsy – thanks for your visit and comment. I hope to do another post like this sometime. ‘Prakus’ sounds like it’s from prácás, Irish for ‘hotchpotch, medley, mess’ (used by your mother in a neutral or positive way, I’m sure!). It features in dictionaries of Irish English by Bernard Share and Terence Dolan, both of whom mention its use in reference to food (‘a mixed dish like stew’). Share lists a few anglicized spellings (pracus, prackus, prockus), while Dolan cites a correspondent from Kerry: ‘What prácás have you cooking there? It doesn’t smell too bad at all.’
[…] bulling, cnáimhseáil, feck, fierce, fooster, notions, oxter, plámás, sleeveen, and till. The first collection featured acushla machree, asthore, cat, give out, hames, moryah, smacht, thick, and […]