Talk:List of English words of Irish origin

message: Is there a distinction to be drawn between  Hiberno-English  words, i.e. only understood within Ireland, and words originating in Ireland but now part of standard English?  Since the former may be listed on that page, is there a need to list them here too, or indeed should they be moved here?
As stated, crack is not originally Irish; similarly smithereens is from English smithers with Irish diminutive suffix -een.  
Some of the origins seem dubious  folk etymologies .
:Have added "Tory" (robber, outlaw) -- couldn't resist it -- but I agree with the comments above to the effect that the list as it stands is a bit of a hotchpotch... -- Picapica 21:40, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: A number of these words are cognate with Scottish Gaelic - certainly "loch" is how it's spelled in Scotland... are we certain that these all came to English via Irish Gaelic? - Donnchadh mac Alasdair  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.81.254.74 (talk) 11:15, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Using Wikipedia as a source to back up what I had learned in my studies: "Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus descends ultimately from Old Irish." I had heard that the Gaelic Scots were descended from early Irish immigrants. But the words do seem likely to have filtered into English from their interaction with the Scots. Galliv (talk) 05:19, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Scottish Gaelic

message: An editor (it doesn't matter who) recently added a bunch of edits speculating on the origins of some of these words.  While I think much of the additions are dubious, it occured to me as I considered reverting that none of this article, or very little, is sourced or references.  As such I added the  template, and will leave it be, but as of now it is a mix of possibly useful information and outright misinformation, casting doubt on the whole thing. -- Gnetwerker 18:25, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources 

message: Crack or rather crak is a Scots word, which found its way into Irish Gaelic under the spelling of craic. It probably came to Ireland with the Plantation of Ulster and as many other Scots words has become part of everyday speak by both sides of the community such as other Scots words like scundered, foundered, thieving, plastered etc. Mabuska 23:56, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crack 

message: Would it be a good idea to separate the list into sections alphabetically? akarkera 09:27, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sections 

message: Many of the words here appear to be attributed as a result of supposition. Many of them seem incredible. This "article" needs to be better sourced, and a better etymology of the words given or be deleted. It completely lacks academic veracity or credibility, and stinks of the tall stories of some Irish bloke in a bar.
So, at the moment it's just another steaming pile of wikiality, and should not be trusted at all in any way.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.168.164 (talk) 03:04, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to remove all the entries sourced to Cassidy as well as some of the others which are more likely to come from Welsh or Scottish Gaelic. I've also limited this to words derived from the Irish (Gaelic) language. We already have a list of "dialect" words at Hiberno-English. --Folantin (talk) 18:38, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree this needs to be better sourced. Has anyone considered the inherent problems with using English sources entirely? It seems to rely heavily on the OED. It's fine to use that as a starting point, but the words need to be checked in Irish sources as well. As an editor (in English) for 35 years, I found the OED very reliable...for English words. Once I started studying Irish, I became aware of its drawbacks: a subtle bias and seeming unwillingness to attribute any word to an Irish source. Some very obvious Irish words are listed as "uncertain source". While etymology can be tricky due to 1000 years of mixing the two peoples, it can't have all been a one way street. Galliv (talk) 05:11, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sources? 

message: The following etymology dictionaries are currently available for free online:
Etymology Dictionary by Ayto (2005), Etymololgy Dictionary by Harper (2001), Etymology Dictionary by Partridge (1966), Etymology Dictionary by Weekley (1921), Etymology Dictionary by Skeat (1888). Also available online is the concise version of the Oxford English Dictionary. On the basis of these six dictionaries, I propose to delete bard, callow, shanty from the list of words of Irish Gaelic origin.
Bard. In short, English bard primarily comes from popular ancient Latin writings that have bardus = poet. Bard is an ancient Celtic word. Welsh bardd and Breton barz mean 'poet-singer'. Scottish Gaelic bard entered Scottish English in mid-15th century with the meaning of 'vagabond minstrel'. However the modern literary meaning of bard is 17th century and is derived from -- or at least strongly influenced by -- the ancient Greek bardos and Latin bardus (e.g. used by the poet Lucan, 1st century AD), which in turn come from the Gaulish language. The word bard appears in modern French, Spanish, Italian, German and other European languages and I believe this widespreadness is due to its presence in the Greek and Latin, not English. But in any case, none of the etymology dictionaries give the English word bard a demonstrable descent from Irish Gaelic, even though several of them mention the co-existence of the Irish Gaelic word. The demonstrable descent is from Scottish Gaelic and Latin. (See also the comment by 86.53.39.216 earlier on this page.)
callow: All the above etymology dictionaries say callow descends from Old English calu = ‘bald’. They also say this old english word is probably West Germanic, and point to cognates in Old Friesan, Dutch and German. They do not point to any Irish connection. The Wikipedia article cites the Oxford English Dictionary as saying that callow is "cognate with the Irish calbh (bald), and is a particularly Irish usage (OED)." -- bear in mind that "cognate" does not mean originating from. I haven't looked at the full-length OED, but the concise OED that's free online says callow's origin is "Old English, "bald", probably from Latin calvus ‘bald’, later "unfledged""; see http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/callow. Similarly see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/callow Furthermore the meaning of callow as "a water-meadow" in the Wikipedia article is not supported by any of the dictionaries.
:This is irrelevant to question of including 'callow' or not, as I agree that the word seems to derive from Old English, but the use of the term to mean a water-meadow (or accurately, an 'alluvial flat') does exist in dictionaries and there is a specifically Irish connection. The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (on-line at ) defines 'callow' as 'an alluvial flat along a water-course: a term used by writers on Irish geology and agriculture' while the callows on the river Shannon are well known: Shannon Callows. Perhaps, this word is Hiberno-English rather than Irish derived. However, there are also callows in English place-names. I mostly mention this because I'm not very happy with the dictionaries you are using (see comments on fiacre and tilly below) (Wohz (talk) 17:24, 2 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed deletion of Bard, Callow and Shanty 

message: I can't imagine the List of English words of Old Irish origin getting a great number of entries. Old Irish is certainly a different language from Irish, but keeping these words in their own section on this page would set them apart well enough. --Leif Runenritzer (talk) 04:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Somehow I missed this debate but fair enough, I don't object. However, the page seems to have been turned into a redirect without the entries having been moved or am I not getting something? Akerbeltz (talk) 15:53, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: There were only three entires on the Old Irish page (cross, dulse, tocher) but they've all been moved over. ~Asarlaí 15:55, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: So they have - my apologies. Akerbeltz (talk) 16:12, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Merger proposal

message: **I have removed the assertion that "kybosh" was "International English" as opposed to "kibosh," supposedly American English. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., "kibosh," k-i-bosh is the standard spelling in Standard English, while k-y-bosh is an alternate.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.176.243.154 (talk) 09:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Kybosh

message: I have just removed "slum" which has been added, with a reference to Cassidy.
While I haven't got a reference that definitely says Cassidy is wrong, I have several circumstantial reasons to doubt his etymology ("s lom é" = "it is bleak"); and the discussion further up this page suggests that he is not reliable.
#While the OED does not have a specific etymology for "slum" (just saying "of Cant origin"), not one of the early citations there appears to have any particular connection to Ireland.
#The oldest citation there with the modern meaning of "slum" is from 1825; but older meanings of "a room" and "nonsense" are attested from 1819 and 1811-12 respectively, and neither of them has any particular "bleak"ness about them.
#It is extremely rare for a word to be borrowed from a phrase - still less a sentence - in another language.
As I say, these are all circumstantial: perhaps there are older, Irish references; perhaps the older meanings in the OED are unrelated words; and borrowings from sentences, though rare, are not unknown. Perhaps Cassidy has solid evidence for his suggestion (I haven't seen Cassidy's book). But judging from the comments mentioned above, I would doubt it, and say that the burden of proof for inclusion in this list is to show the evidence that Cassidy relies on. --ColinFine (talk) 19:09, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slum (Cassidy again) 

message: I've removed "dig" (unsourced, and with an unsourced story about Irish and Blacks in New York), and "slapper", which is sourced only to Wiktionary: I'm going to remove the etymology from there, as it is unsourced and unlikely. --ColinFine (talk) 09:22, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Dig and Slapper

message: I may have been hasty in removing clock, thanks to Rashers who pointed that out. The OED accepts that there may be an Old Irish derivation involved but that involves the word going Old Irish > Germanic > Flemish > English. I guess the question is, do we include words which are maybe of Irish origin? In any case, if it's the case, then it belongs on List of English words of Irish origin, not here, as it certainly did not come via modern Irish. Akerbeltz (talk) 13:40, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure I follow in which article you think it might be more appropriate. Generally I'd be inclined to include, with ref., and whatever qualifier they use. RashersTierney (talk) 18:36, 9 November 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: It should go in the Old Irish one, methinks. Akerbeltz (talk) 01:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clock 

message: This article is described as "a list of English language words from the Celtic Irish language." The word boycott is not derived from the Irish language and does not belong here. See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=boycott&searchmode=none 88.151.31.65 (talk) 18:50, 17 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Boycott 

message: Cassidy knew no Irish. He was ignorant of linguistics. All he did was look for similar words in an Irish dictionary and try to match them with English words (or, often, he ungrammatically stringed together Irish words and offered the strings as etymons of English words). The little that is right in Cassidy's book has long been known and is thus not original with him (such as the Irish origin of galore). Whatever was original with him is fantasy. He was debunked long ago. See, for example, Danielomastix's blog, cassidyslangscam / A debunking of Daniel Cassidy's theories about the influence of the Irish language on English slang (https://cassidyslangscam.wordpress.com/author/johndonnelly01/page/2/), which should be mentioned hereS. Valkemirer (talk) 20:07, 28 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cassidy's book has been debunked.