Cornishperson
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Forms: form: Cornishpeople
form: Cornishpersons
Etymology: From Cornish + -person.
Senses: examples: text: A London evening paper, The Glowworm, generally well informed on political and some other matters, has come out this week with some “exclusive information” concerning Cornish mines and miners. “There is,” says our contemporary, “fearful distress in Cornwall,” and—nothing like going from home for home news—“it is mainly attributable to the apathetic nature characteristic of the inhabitants of the West of England.” It may be proof of our apathy to make the admission, but we confess we were not aware that Cornishpeople were particularly apathetic: we never knew they had so distinguished themselves.
ref: 1867 October 10, “[County Events.] The Mines and Miners of Cornwall.”, in The Royal Cornwall Gazette, Falmouth Packet, and General Advertiser, number 3352, Truro, Cornwall, page 5, column 1:
text: Pointing out that it is difficult to arbitrarily class the Members of Parliament, the writer asks where shall Mr. Fletcher Moulton be placed? This distinguished lawyer—who is probably destined to be in the next Liberal Cabinet—the representative of the Launceston Division, is thus the parliamentary spokesman of the famous “Callington Platform,” probably the only rural programme yet defined by English farmers themselves. This is, perhaps, a fact new to many Cornishpeople. It is eminently a feather in Cornwall’s “cap.”
ref: 1905 January 5, “[Cornish Men and Cornish Matters.] A Cornish Agrarian Politician.”, in West Briton & Cornwall Advertiser, volume XCV, number 4,930, Truro, Cornwall, page 4, column 5:
text: I wonder how much in the way of foodstuffs is being sent from Cornwall to wealthy folk elsewhere. I know shopkeepers and others who have been asked to send weekly parcels of butter and bacon and other articles of food. And the consequence is that Cornishpeople have to go short.
ref: 1917 December 21, “Pentire” [pseudonym], “[Newquay Notes.] Save or Starve.”, in Cornish Guardian and County Chronicle, volume 17, number 883, Bodmin, Cornwall, page 5, column 2:
text: There is much that is hard and toilsome in the lives of the poor folk who belong, one feels, to that generation of Cornishpeople that is fast passing away, and their simple philosophy, if too crude to include the broader humanities, has a pathetic charm of its own.
ref: 1926 July 19, “[Literature.] The Cornish Character.”, in The Western Morning News and Western Daily Mercury, number 20,694, Plymouth, Devon; Exeter, Devon, page 9, column 5:
text: SO much in love with their own county are Cornishpeople that even in more peaceful days they often stayed in Cornwall for their holidays.
ref: 1942 July 23, “[Whispers and Echoes: […]] Holidays At Home.”, in Cornish Guardian and Cornwall County Chronicle, Eastern edition, volume 42, number 2,167, Bodmin, Cornwall, page 3, column 1:
text: MR. W. H. Lane, of Penzance, spoke on a subject of interest to many Cornishpeople—paying guests at farms—at the South-Western Division of the British Hotels and Restaurants Association, when it opened its first conference at Bournemouth on Thursday.
ref: 1949 January 27, “Guests at Farm Houses: Hotel Keepers Told the Rating Law”, in The Cornishman, Incorporating The Cornish Post, number 5049, Penzance, Cornwall, page 5, column 3:
text: “Q” was, I know, the Cornishman best-known overseas, always excepting the great Bob Fitzsimmons. In the United States his fame endures, as was shown not long ago by the American reviews of Mr. F. Brittain’s biography. But I doubt if many Americans read his novels. For that matter, I doubt if many Cornishpeople read them. / TASTES HAVE CHANGED / My schoolfellows, nearly all of them Cornish, thought his fiction a terrible bore (though one or two of them liked “Dead Man’s Rock”) and I cannot remember ever in my life meeting a friend in Cornwall with a copy of (let us say) “Major Vigoureux” or “Sir John Constantine” under his arm. There must of course be Cornishpeople who know their “Q” almost by heart, but they comprise a small minority.
ref: 1949 November 17, John Penwith, “Cornwall as the ‘Q’ Country? Miss Du Maurier’s Wider Fame; Novelist Who Is Read by Millions”, in The Cornishman, Incorporating The Cornish Post, number 5091, Penzance, Cornwall, page 4, column 4:
text: When he was enthroned as Bishop of Truro in his Cathedral Church in June, 1935, Dr. Hunkin said, “I have come home,” and his happy face was convincing proof of his pleasure in his translation. He was then, at 47, the youngest Bishop in the Church of England. Within six months he was able to announce that he had visited two-thirds of the 240 parishes in the diocese, and this tremendous activity continued until Churchpeople everywhere in the county and many other Cornishpeople could say with satisfaction that they had met the new Bishop.
ref: 1950 October 30, “[Great Son of Truro: Bishop’s Death in London Hospital; Heavy Loss to Diocese] Ordained in Exeter Cathedral”, in The West Briton, Truro, Cornwall, page 3, column 3:
text: MOST Cornishpeople live n[ear] enough to the land to f[ind] themselves sitting uneasily [on] the fence in the matter of fa[rm] wages.
ref: 1954 June 17, “County Note[s]”, in The West Briton and Royal Cornwall Gazette, volume CXLIV, number 7461, Truro, Cornwall, page 4, column 9:
text: OF all Cornwall’s possessions none belongs so surely to all Cornishpeople everywhere as St. Michael’s Mount. Land’s End and Tintagel both have a greater fame, but among the Cornish themselves—and among hosts of visitors as well—the Mount comes first.
ref: 1954 August 19, J. H. Martin, “‘St. Michael’s Which Is By The Sea’: In This Prosaic World What Can Be Nearer To The Faery Kingdom Of Childhood?”, in The West Briton and Royal Cornwall Gazette, volume CXLIV, number 7470, Truro, Cornwall, page 8, column 3:
text: This change-over will go on apace, but not quite so swiftly when listeners discover the sheer joy of V.H.F. broadcasting. For the first time, Cornishpeople are able to hear music almost exactly as the orchestras and other musicians play it and as the singers sing it, and the difference between this and what has gone before has to be heard to be believed.
ref: 1956 September 24, “Argus” [pseudonym], “[Notes by ‘Argus’] Purity Of Sound”, in The West Briton and Royal Cornwall Gazette, Truro, Cornwall, page 2, column 2:
text: In Nigeria, Mysore and California there are heads that would fly round and hearts that would leap with delight at the sound of a voice saying something quite simple, like, “Aw my dear life.” It takes only a little dialect for our speech to betray us, and a great many Cornishpeople, especially those who have been in the Services, can testify how pleasant it often is to be betrayed in this way in far-off places like Singapore, and Adelaide, and Detroit, and even Birmingham and Newcastle.
ref: 1962 February 5, “Argus” [pseudonym], “[Notes by ‘Argus’] Cornish Writer”, in The West Briton and Royal Cornwall Gazette, Truro, Cornwall, page 2, column 1:
text: The mould for this bizarre landscape was set even before the Ice Ages began. That would have been a satisfying time to have been a Cornishperson, with the rest of southern England still languishing under the sea, and forests of wild rhododendron and magnolia growing on the site of modern shrubberies.
ref: 1983, Richard Mabey, “The Tides of March”, in In a Green Shade: Essays on Landscape 1970–1983, London: Hutchinson, →ISBN, part two (Landscapes), page 57:
text: A.L. Rowse, at the age of 90+, is not only the greatest living Cornishperson but also the most credible and dogmatic authority on all aspects of Elizabethan history and drama.
ref: 1995, UNIX Review, volume 13, San Franciso, Calif.: Miller Freeman, Inc., →ISSN, page 96, column 3:
text: Other sources are less committal, saying only that Celts were (a) the ancient warrior people who whomped the Picts, etc., and (b) anyone whose fairly immediate ancestors spoke some variant of a Celtic language, that is, the Irish, the Welsh, Highland Scots and Hebrides Islanders, Cornishpersons, inhabitants of Brittany and of the Isle of Man.
ref: 1998 March 17, “[The Editorial Page] All Celts now”, in Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, Ont.: Southam Inc., page A14, column 2:
text: From the outset, the scheme looked dodgy. Some countries divide fairly easily into regions, but not England. No mighty river or range of snow-capped peaks divides the north from the south, still less the Midlands from anywhere else. On the map, the south-west looks reasonably discrete, but even there, Cornishpersons want as little to do with Devonians as possible.
ref: 2002 March 11, David Cox, “Blair counts the counties out”, in New Statesman, volume 131, London, →ISSN, archived from the original on 27 Feb 2024, page 21:
text: This year there were Celtic representatives from Breton and Wales who came to see the welcoming of 29 new Bards and the celebrations as well as many Cornishpeople who came to see the event.
ref: 2004 September 4, “Cornish Gorsedd 2004”, in BBC News, London, archived from the original on 15 Nov 2004:
text: After 'class war', we now apparently have 'location war'. If this idea is allowed to progress beyond Ms Harperson's terrifyingly one-track mind, hundreds of public organisations will have to have special quotas for Yorkshirepersons or Cornishpersons whenever a vacancy occurs.
ref: 2009 July 15, “Rights for Northerners. A PC honours list. What have we done to deserve Harriet Harperson and her equality maniacs?”, in Daily Mail, London: DMG Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 16 Jul 2009:
hypernyms: West Briton
holonyms: Cornish#Noun
glosses: A person from Cornwall.