The Words We Use

In his splendid book, Na Gaeil i dTalamh an Eisc (Coisceim, 1998), Aodhan O hEadhra gives us a valuable little glossary of words…

In his splendid book, Na Gaeil i dTalamh an Eisc (Coisceim, 1998), Aodhan O hEadhra gives us a valuable little glossary of words of Irish provenance which have survived in Newfoundland English to the present day. Very many of these words escaped the net thrown by the editors of the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (1982) and with regard to one in particular, angishore, O hEadhra points to the dangers of folk-etymology. For folk, read false.

Angishore is glossed as "a person who is wretched or sick, one who arouses pity or sympathy: `You poor little angishore, were you frost-burned with the cold?"' It's obvious that the meaning of angishore hasn't changed since it came to Newfoundland with the settlers from Waterford, Wexford, Kilkenny, Tipperary and south Carlow in the 18th century; but the natives, mainly of English stock, thought that the word they heard was hangashore; hence this supplementary definition in the Dictionary of Newfoundland English: "a man regarded as too lazy to fish; a worthless fellow, a sluggard; a rascal."

No doubt you've heard angishore in Ireland. For obvious reasons it's unlikely that you'll have come across moryeen, "a fertiliser made from mixing offal of cod-fish with bog". Dinneen has its ancestor, muirin, mould, turf-mould, mire. This word hasn't, as far as I know, been assimilated into the English of Ireland.

To lal in Newfoundland English is to stick your tongue out in contempt. Dinneen, refusing as always to use the infinitive, has the verb lealaim, "I suck, lip, lap with the tongue". Cosh or coish is "part of a river estuary cut off from the sea at low tide". Irish cos, cois, mean a shoal, bank, or bar.

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Has sheeny been assimilated into the English of Ireland, I wonder? I haven't come across it: "a miser, a mean person". This is Irish siothnai. A sheeny would get stowtered on someone else's money: stowtered means "bastely drunk", according to O hEadhra's informant. Its origin is given as Irish stabh, a drinking cup. I wonder. The verb stauter is widespread in Scotland and England; it means to stagger, stumble. Perhaps it is related to the hypothetical Teutonic root staut-, meaning push, knock over; to Old Norse stauta, meaning to strike, and to modern German stossen, to push, to strike against. Here's a word I heard myself from a Newfoundland fisherman, Bill Hickey from St Mary's Bay, a lovely word that has escaped even the indefatigable O hEadhra: moorling, a mist or light shower. In Irish, muirling.