Cassidese Glossary – Cross

For some time now, some of my on-line friends have advised me to provide a version of CassidySlangScam without the invective aimed at Cassidy and his supporters. In response to that advice, I am working on providing a glossary of the terms in Cassidy’s ludicrous book How The Irish Invented Slang with a short, simple and business-like explanation of why Cassidy’s version is wrong.

As Daniel Cassidy states in his book How The Irish Invented Slang, the word cross is believed to come from Latin crux via Old Irish cros and Old Norse. It gradually supplanted the original word for cross in English, which was rood, as in a rood-screen. The English dictionaries accept that this is the origin of the word and this claim certainly did not originate with Cassidy.