Cassidese Glossary – Slop

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 work of false etymologies, How The Irish Invented Slang, claimed that the English terms slop and sloppy are of Irish origin. He claims that they are linked either to slab, (the origin of slob in sloblands) or to words like slapach or slapaire, meaning slovenly or a slovenly person. McKinnon’s Gaelic etymological dictionary makes it quite clear that slab comes from the Norse word slab, while slapaire comes from the Norse word slapr, meaning a slovenly person. In other words, they are two separate words with separate origins, so Cassidy’s claim is illogical.

However, the claim is also nonsense for another reason. Cassidy says that:

Anglo-American dictionaries derive the words slop and sloppy from Old English cūsloppe for cow dung. The word sloppy does not appear in English vernacular until the 19^th century. (Barnhart, 1019.)

This is nonsense. No English or American English dictionary derives slop and sloppy from the word cūsloppe. The word slop is quite ancient in English and is found around the year 1400 with the meaning of mudhole. This in turn probably derives from an Old English word sloppe meaning dung but this element is not found on its own. It is only found in one compound word, the plant name cūsloppe which is the origin of modern English cowslip and is believed to mean cow dung, probably because the cowslip is found where cattle graze. (The Irish bainne bó bleachtáin means milk of a milking cow and also links the cowslip to cows.) Sloppy dates back to the 18^th century but slop goes back a long way in English and has no connection with Irish or Scottish Gaelic.

Cassidese Glossary – Puck, Pook, Pooka

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 late Daniel Cassidy, in his etymological hoax, claimed that English terms like puck for a spirit (as in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream) are derived from the Irish word púca, a name for a kind of spirit well-known in Irish folklore. While there is no doubt about the word puck and the word púca being related (and discussion of this goes back a long way before Cassidy) there is little room for doubt that the ultimate origin of these terms is the Norse puki, meaning an imp. Remember that there are no native Irish words beginning with the letter p about from pus, which is a corruption of an earlier word bus.

Cassidese Glossary – Poker (Bogeyman)

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 late Daniel Cassidy in his etymological hoax How The Irish Invented Slang, the 19^th century American term for a bogeymen, poker is from the Irish word púca, meaning a kind of spirit. It is not clear where poker came from or what its relationship was with words like the English dialect puck. In folklore there is a supernatural character called Tom Poker, who is found in dark cupboards. A spooky old house could be referred to as pokerish in 19^th century English. Whatever the facts are, púca is not originally an Irish word and probably derives from the same (Norse) word as words like puck. Poker is possibly also derived from the same source but it is hard to say.