Irishisms

Boston248

I am an ignorant American. Anyway, I would like to see a comprehensive list of every "Irishism", or term mostly unique to the Irish you've ever heard, or even just said a lot in Ireland. OK?

Boston248

You know, like chipper or bollocks. But, more than that.

Alaronshannara

Expletives? Easy: feck, eejit, dublin.

We also add an 'e' to the end of the s word, and pronounce it differently, but I'm sure having been in Ireland you've heard our version enough times that I needn't sully the board with it.

Otherwise, depends on the county. Down here in Cork some people use the word 'feen', kind of like 'lad' or 'guy', or 'Beore' (Bee-oar) for a girl. But that's not that common any more, since Red FM did a parody of it.
Our shopkeepers don't say 'Have a nice day' to everyone and everything, so I suppose that's an 'Irishism' by exclusion.
We use the term 'pub-grub' to refer to food that can be ordered in a pub, some of which can be top notch food found otherwise only in restaurants. On that note, the term 'grub' is used to refer to snacks (But almost never actual meals).

That's about as much as I remember at the moment..

Typedef

Irishism:

Teenybopper mag : Stars on Sunday*
*Available Saturday.

Raphael

Skanger is a complete irishism

flangeman

I once had to explain the word 'slag' as in 'slagging' somebody off to and Englishman and an American.

sionnach

"saváiste cabáiste" as gaeilge or "savage cabbage" in english

Crash

Gob****e. best Irishism EVER.

Boston248

To encourage growth, some recognition and bragging rights to the person who comes up with the most.

purplepolkadot

joining two swearwords together is the BEST one
like ****earse, feckarse, ****ewad, feckwad, phlegmwad...

flaming gobsheen.

we take the name of the lord god our father in vain alot
eg. be the leppin' jaysus (by the leaping jesus. really)

you langer, you big langer, you hairy langer. general term of offence. to get/be langered it to get/be drunk. sometimes people use it to mean tired aswell, but they're ****e.

culchie: me, cos i'm from a rural place. i'm a hick.
knacker: white trash that lives in a small country town
skanger: the above in dublin, or other large place.
mong: someone who is dumb and ****e and not very hip, crappy basically. there was a greeaaaat mong with bells on at session1 this year, but i won't name him. 'cept i christened him ******* the mong.
me oul' wan/mammy: mother
the oul' fella/daddy: father

state of you, state of your face.

bockin/ridin/shaggin/givin a good seein ta/feekin: sex
you can also say that someone's a ride (say it with an 'o', roide) or a feek

bite me knob

putting an 'o' at the end of names; eg. Anto, Micko.

ireland's the ONLY place to go to 'worry' a sheep.

the verb 'to period'

to boist(bust)/break someone's face is to beat the holy **** out of them

we also say 'hoor' instead of whore. cos of how we speak.

i'll think of more and post them. cos i'm from the back end of nowhere so we practically have our own language (other than irish you smartarse)

Chimaera

A great threat from Limerick: "D'ya want to pick yer teet up witcher broken fingurs" (all spelling mistakes intended) - translates into "do you want to pick your teeth up with your broken fingers" and the meaning should be fairly obvious

Another one is "Pick your window, you're leaving"

A few more - arse instead of ass - 'up the pole' meaning being pregnant, mainly Dublin I think - tasty meaning good at something e.g. 'he's a tasty hurler now'

Some nice ones my mother has from North Kerry - "like a red raw divil (devil)" = very pissed off / "he nearly climbed a tree when you did X" = he was mightily pissed off when you did X / "fit to be tied" = pissed off (anyone seeing a pattern here? ) / midered = tired / porshawlin' (phonetic spelling here - don't ask me how it might actually be spelt) = wandering around the place

Funny thing is, I'm finding it damned hard to try and think of these, even though they're used by most of us everyday. It's just something we never really notice.

Havelock

A smattering of Irishism that I use, or have created and amused many by my erronious use of them.

-Legend (The Highest form of acolade in the country, as in down
the country)

-Leg...end (As above with emphasis)

-Last orders (countryside only, fictious time where the bar
threatens to stop serving)

-Top of the morn' to ya (Just kidding)

-Ask me flaps (Dublin only, "female" skanger term for "I refuse to
devulge that information as I deem you unworthy
of the knowledge")

-Whats the sceal/story? (How are you?)

-Animal/ 'naimal (cool, abet abit out dated)

-on the jam rag (when a woman is in the discharge part of her
menstral cycle)

Many more but they all get worse

incredula pert

these are more dublinisms i suppose, but here we go anyway

Leg...(end) (as said before, someone who is generally, very cool)

Get the boat (can take on a number of different meanings, as in"no way, i don't believe it, what amazing news", or "shut up, you lying bastard" or "feck off")

Up the duff (pregant)

Slow animal (idiot)

To "waffle" (to Bullsh*t)

load of waffles(load of bull sh*t)

a lash or a cracker (a very attractive male or female, though "cracker" is usually used to describe females only)

geebag (used most by scangers, its basically calling someone a vagina bag)

it'll "kick tits" (it'll be great)

classy

brilliant idear, darling. true class. while not being irish myself, i would just like to emphasize the beauty of the word roide. and i feel real special, coz i can actually think of a few t'add myself, little things i picked up from the skangers, knackers and culchie's of CTYI. pour exemple: i'm knackered (exhausted), class= great, and tho i dont kno the spellin, a good time is great craic.

Havelock

On that point, funny story...

My father worked as a tour guide for a many years, and had a great reputation espically with american tour groups because of his love for the job and understanding of their wants.
On day he had a group of retired cops from somewhere in the bible belt area and was down in Galway. They had been traveling for about 4 days all over the country, but it was Friday night and they wanted to go to a nice little harbour pub, my father knew of just the place. As they approached the quiet little tatched building, my fathers voice echoed out over the intercom reasuring his group that despite the humble facade, the bar they were going to (and I quote) "Has some of the nicest hookers in Ireland and the crack is always great". He then had to spend 1 hour explaining that "hookers" was as in Galway Hookers ( a type of gaff rigged sailing boat ) and that the Irishism "Crack" meant fun to the pious ex-lawmen and their wives, before any of them would get off the bus.

I would had paid good money to have been there. lol

shep the malevolent pixie

"grand" is the most irish irishism of all! i say that word about 100 times a day.

others include:
"deadly buzz" - an expression that can mean many things; hurray, that's great etc., always as an expression of jubilation.
"i'm only buzzin' off yeh" - i'm only joking
"i'll bate the face off yeh" - "i'll beat the face off you" i'll beat you up

those are very dublin ones, whereas "i'll bop you" is more of a cork expression, or so i'm told.

using curse words as punctuation is also very irish, e.g.-
"we were f*cking around town when that f*cker jim came over and f*ckin' asked us did we want to f*ck off up to his gaf to f*ck down a few pints."

there's so many more but i can't think of any right now.

Liquorice

The most obvious that no one has mentioned are meet, shift and get off with, all meaning French kiss. I think that most others have been mentioned. Báistéird bhéalghnuasithe is the Irish for c***-faced b******, feistithe is f***ed, rampaire is ride and cacamas is s***. I suppose that they aren't really Irishisms though. Up ya boya is a term of encouragement used by a lot of my rural relations, boyo is a term used when speaking to a male, whether it's patronising, friendly etc. depends on the context. Sad means uncool, slightly outdated and sound is a term to describe a decent person. Brutal is also a bit outdated, it means terrible.

Barry Aldwell

Originally posted by Scarlett
The most obvious that no one has mentioned are meet, shift and get off with, all meaning French kiss.

Reminds me of when poncho Alex said he was going to go and "meet" his friend Alex on the first day.

Twinkle

Ok,here are Stab City's finest Irishisms:

To go away with someone means to shift them:
'yaw der,willuh goway wit yer man der?'

A ghoul or a ghoulbag is a b******:
'Ya gowlbag,I swar ta gad,if I catchuh, I'll break yer face,so I will.'

A 'batein' is a beating:
'Yawr waitn for a batin,yawr cruisin for a brusin.'

'Oill shtab yaw.' Heard the most often...and all of these threats usually come from a pack of ten year olds with big hoopy earrings,cigarrettes,greasy hair and oh yeah,hoodies.

Spog

My dad's forever givin out to us for puttin "like" in everywhere in a sentence because he thinks its from american tv shows, but i feel its become quite an irishism, for culchies like me anyway. also adding an "if ya know wat i mean" before the "like" or a "ya know" after the "like" at the end of a sentence is a common occurance in rural ireland.

stevanavich

personally i like the "like", and "ya know" in culchie speak. it adds character to the person and a twang to the sound of the accent...
that is until it becomes excessive, like when the word "like" or words "ya know like" appear as every second or third word in a sentence. it just sounds weird then. its like a culchie version of the dublin skang "f*ck". used everywhere to mean nothing and everything, with absolutely no context whatsoever...like.