Cassidese Glossary – Poultice Route

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.

Daniel Cassidy, in his etymological hoax, How The Irish Invented Slang, claimed that in hobo slang, The Poultice Route was a term for the land of milk and honey or the southern route. This is a typical Cassidy distortion. In reality, a poultice was an hobo slang term for a dish of bread and gravy and the Poultice Route was any rail line going through Utah, where the inhabitants “are generally hospitable, and where bread and gravy is always to be had even though, on account of poverty, meat may be scarce.”

Cassidy’s claim is that the poultice of the Poultice Route is really from the Irish ball deas, which he says means “a nice place, a pretty spot, a southern place”. In reality, ball deas would simply mean a nice spot, which is vague. It is also completely unlike poultice in pronunciation. The explanation given above (and ignored completely by Cassidy) is far more convincing.

Cassidese Glossary – Nan

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.

Cassidy claims that nan comes from the Irish word nain or naing for grandmother. In fact this is an English expression for “children’s nurse,” 1795, from the widespread child’s word for “female adult other than mother” (compare Greek nanna “aunt”), perhaps also influenced by a pet-name for Anne. As Cassidy says, there are words like nain and naing given by Dinneen in his dictionary, but they are not defined as “grandmother”. Dinneen says that it means a fostermother, while naing mhór means a grandmother (O’N.); he also adds the note “cf. Nanny and Nain, used for grandmother.”

The reference to O’N means the manuscript dictionary of Tadhg Ó Neachtain, which was written in the year 1739. In other words, this is earlier by several generations than the earliest reference to nanny meaning a nurse or grandmother in English.

In other words, this is interesting and worth investigating. However, it is also worth noting that Cassidy didn’t carry out any meaningful research on this word. He merely noted that there is a word nain meaning a foster-mother or a grandmother in Irish and asserted that this was the origin of the English term but without making any attempt to identify where this word came from or whether there were other candidates. And while the Ó Neachtain reference is early and interesting, there is not much other evidence for the word in Irish. It’s not in the Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language. Furthermore, it occurs in other languages. For example, in Welsh, nain is the usual north Wales version of the word for grandmother, and it dates back to the 14^th century.

Personally, I doubt whether the Irish term is the origin of the English expression but it is certainly worth looking at in greater depth.

Cassidese Glossary – Mihall

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.

This is not an Irish loanword into English. It is an Irish word (meitheal, a working party, a group organised for a specific task) which apparently was sometimes used in conversation by a union activist called Mike Quill, who spoke some Irish, in order to confuse the police and stop them from anticipating their plans.

Some of Cassidy’s dimmer supporters have tried to imply that critics of Cassidy do not believe there were any Irish speakers in the USA. This is obviously nonsense. For generations, most of the young people left Irish-speaking areas in the west of Ireland and headed into exile in the USA, Australia, England, Scotland and other places. However, there was no major influence from Irish speakers on American speech and the fact – the blindingly obvious fact – that Cassidy couldn’t discover any genuine examples of Irish words in English that hadn’t been identified before proves this.

Cassidese Glossary – Mick

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.

One of the sillier claims in Daniel Cassidy’s etymological hoax, How The Irish Invented Slang, is the claim that the word ‘Mick’, which is used in various English-speaking countries as a racist insult against the Irish, comes from the Irish word mic, the plural of mac meaning son. Cassidy doesn’t explain why this should be the case, why racists would use a word meaning son (which is usually a mark of affection), in the language of the people they were denigrating, or why a plural word would be used as a singular. Mic sounds like Mick, so it must be the origin of the word, right? Never mind that everybody in Ireland knows full well that certain common names among the Catholic Irish have become slang terms for a Catholic Irish person – Taig (Tadhg), Tim (equivalent of Tadhg, used in Scotland), Paddy and Mick. Never mind that all of the (genuine) dictionaries are in agreement about this.

In fact, in exactly the same way, our Irish ancestors used terms like Bhullaí (=Wully or Willy) for the Ulster Planters from Scotland. For example, Art Mac Cumhaigh wrote “Bhullaidh is Jane ag glacadh léagsaidhe Ar dhúithchíbh Éireann” (Wully and Jane taking out leases On the territories of Ireland.) And seoinín (=Little John, later anglicised as shoneen and jackeen) was used for people who aped English ways. As usual, Cassidy’s claim is simply nonsense.

Cassidese Glossary – Mayhem

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. 

According to the etymological hoaxer, Daniel Cassidy, this word, which means a disturbance or trouble, is derived from the Irish word maidhm, which means an outbreak. This sounds plausible enough until you examine the evidence properly.

Maidhm is pronounced similarly to the English word mime. It does mean an outbreak. It is used of something which has been held in and suddenly breaks through. So a maidhm shneachta is a maidhm of snow, an avalanche. A landslide is a maidhm thalún, while a maidhm phortaigh is a distinctly Irish natural disaster, the bogslide.

So, can maidhm be used for riot or civil disturbance? Irish is very rich in words and phrases for disturbances or hubbub (an Irish word in itself). Trioblóid, ciréib, cíor thuathail, cath, ruaille-buaille, rí-rá, fuirse má rabhdaileam. Maidhm is not one that would normally be used. If someone said “Bhí maidhmeanna i mBéal Feirste aréir”, an Irish speaker would take this to mean that there were landslides of some kind in Belfast, not that there were riots.

When maidhm is used about warfare, it has a very specific meaning, namely that your defensive line has broken and that your troops are running away. In other words, it means a rout or catastrophic defeat. This is not at all what the word mayhem means, of course.

And in any case, the word mayhem doesn’t sound much like maidhm and it has an absolutely clear and undisputed history going back to the 13th century, before any Irish ghettoes appeared in the English-speaking world. It derives from Norman French and is a legal term.

Cassidese Glossary – Hoax, Hocus

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.

The word hoax has a well-established origin in English. Hoax derives from an earlier word hocus, which meant to confuse, befuddle, drug or trick someone. Hocus almost certainly derives from hocus pocus, a garbled version of Latin hoc est corpus. Hocus has been around for hundreds of years, while hoax is more recent.

Cassidy doesn’t accept this. He prefers a derivation from the Irish olcas, which is pronounced olkass. (Not holkas) It doesn’t sound much like hoax. And does it mean the same thing as a hoax? No, it means badness or wickedness. Hoaxes are sometimes evil and wicked. Sometimes they are just playful. But they always involve the notion of dishonesty, of tricking people. In Irish, the words bob (as in bob a bhualadh ar dhuine, to play a practical joke on someone) or cleas (as in cleas a imirt ar dhuine, to play a trick on someone) would be the usual words for hoax. Not olcas. I should also point out that olcas is an abstract noun, not an adjective as Cassidy states.

A Christmas Warning

A week ago, Daniel Cassidy’s absurd book How The Irish Invented Slang was way down on the Amazon sales lists – somewhere around 900,000th. on both Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. If there were any justice, this trashy, awful book would be out of print. However, I notice that on the American Amazon rankings, it has now gone up to around 500,000th, as naïve people look around for a present for their relatives and take this nasty piece of fakery as a genuine contribution to our knowledge about the Irish past.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again – if you give this book as a present, you are giving out a clear message about yourself. At least some of the recipients will find this blog or other negative reviews of this book. If they have any sense at all, they will realise that you are an idiot. A crank. A flat-earther. A flake. A total amadán, just like its author.

So, this Christmas, if you can’t think of anything to give people, don’t give this rubbish. Give a global gift from Trócaire or Oxfam or whatever the equivalent is where you live, or make a contribution to a charity on their behalf and put the receipt in a card. Give hope and help to people who need it, and say something positive about yourself.

Don’t give the gift of ignorance this Christmas.

Hoax

The word hoax has a well-established origin in English. Hoax derives from an earlier word hocus, which meant to confuse, befuddle or trick someone. Hocus derives from hocus pocus, a garbled version of Latin hoc est corpus. Hocus has been around for hundreds of years, while hoax is more recent.

Cassidy doesn’t accept this. He prefers a derivation from the Irish olcas, which is pronounced olkass. (Not holkas)  It doesn’t sound much like hoax. And does it mean the same thing as a hoax? No, it means badness or wickedness. Hoaxes are sometimes evil and wicked. Sometimes they are just playful. But they always involve the notion of dishonesty, of tricking people. In Irish, the words bob (as in bob a bhualadh ar dhuine, to play a practical joke on someone) or cleas (as in cleas a imirt ar dhuine, to play a trick on someone) would be the usual words for hoax. Not olcas. This is a typically fatuous and half-baked Cassidy suggestion.