List of English words of Irish origin

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This is a list of English language words of Irish origin, including from the Celtic Irish language and the Germanic Hiberno-English and Ulster Scots languages.

• banshee: (from bean sídhe, 'fairy woman') wailing female spirit warning of death
• ben: (from Gaelic beann) a mountain peak. For instance, the Twelve Bens in Connemara or Ben Bulben in Sligo, beloved of William Butler Yeats ('Under bare Ben Bulben's head, in Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid...').
• bog: (from bogach, 'a bog', or bog, 'soft') Bog, a piece of wet spongy ground
• boreen: (from bóithrín) a small country road
• brogue: (from bróg, a shoe) A type of shoe.
• brogue: A strong regional accent, especially an Irish one. This may be related to 'brogue' for shoe, but how is obscure.
• clan: In Irish, extended family; also in Irish it refers to the children of a nuclear family.
• callow: A low-lying meadow by an Irish river, liable to be flooded; a water-meadow. Also in adjectival use. This is derived from the English callow (originally, 'bald', or 'unfeathered', and now often 'inexperienced') but is a particularly Irish usage.
• colleen: (from cailín) girl (usually referring to an Irish girl)
• crack: fun. Although, strictly speaking, not a word of Irish origin, it is often spelled craic in an Irish style by those who mistakenly believe it is an Irish language word. It originates (and this is still up for debate), in Scotland [1] and the north of England. Nothing whatsoever to do with the drug crack.
• crag: (from carraig, 'rock') A steep or precipitous rugged rock.
• donnybrook: (from pre-1855 Dublin's Donnybrook Fair) an altercation or fight
• drum: (from droim, 'back') A ridge often separating two long narrow valleys; a long narrow ridge of drift or diluvial formation.
• drumlin: (from droim, 'back' with a diminutive) A small rounded hill of glacial formation, often seen in series.
• ecker: Most often used in Dublin, meaning 'homework'. Derived from 'exercises' as assigned by schoolteachers.
• eejit: Hiberno-English pronunciation of idiot. A fool.
• esker: (from eiscir) an elongated mound of post-glacial gravel, usually along a river valley.
• galore: plenty, a lot. From go leor, Irish for enough. For the poorest of Ireland, enough was a great deal, more than most people had.
• gob: (literally beak) mouth
• gobshite: a fool, one held in contempt. Vulgar. See eejit.
• keen: (from caoin, 'to cry') to lament, to wail mournfully
• kibosh: 'To put the kibosh on' is to do for something, finish it off. The OED says the origin is obscure and possibly Arabic or Yiddish, but it may be from the Irish an cháip bháis, 'the cap of death'.
• loch: (from loch) A lake, or arm of the sea; this has entered English by various routes; one derivation is most obvious (but then the spelling is usually 'lough'), and in Anglo-Irish and in various northern English dialects the origin is Irish.
• leprechaun: - elf, sprite (from leipreachán)
• mot: In Dublin, 'my girlfriend' would be 'me mot'. As the 't' is not strongly pronounced, this sounds as if it might be related to the Irish maith for 'good' (maybe via cailín maith, 'good girl') but is actually a preservation of an English word (mainly for 'harlot') with possible French, Dutch, and Romany origins.
• poteen: (from poitín, 'small pot') hooch, bootleg alcoholic drink
• phoney: (from fáinne, ring) fake (term originating from Irish immigrants in US referring to fake gold rings illegally marketed there)
• quiz: word allegedly invented by a Richard Daly, a Dublin theatre owner, in the late 18th century as result of a bet that he would introduce a new word to the English language overnight.
• she: From the Irish sí
• smashing: (from is maith é sin) that's good
• slob: (from slaba) lazy person
• slogan: (from sluagh-ghairm) troop-cry / war-cry. It source in English may well be Liverpool-Irish in the 1860's.
• slew: (from slua) throng, as in a slew of new products, not as in slay.
• smithereens: (from smidiríní) little pieces
• tilly: (from tuilleadh, 'an additional quantity, supplement') used in Ireland and places of Irish settlement such as Newfoundland to refer to an additional article or amount unpaid for by the purchaser, as a gift from the vendor.
• whiskey: (from uisce beatha, 'water of life').

See also

• Lists of English words of international origin

she from the irish sí