How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads

by Daniel Cassidy

In a series of lively essays, this pioneering book proves that US slang has its strongest wellsprings in nineteenth-century Irish America. "Jazz" and "poker," "sucker" and "scam" all derive from Irish. While demonstrating this, Daniel Cassidy simultaneously traces the hidden history of how Ireland fashioned America, not just linguistically, but through the Irish gambling underworld, urban street gangs, and the powerful political machines that grew out of them. Cassidy uncovers a secret national heritage, long discounted by our WASP-dominated culture. Daniel Cassidy is the founder and co-director of the Irish Studies Program at New College in San Francisco.

Genres: Ireland, Language, Nonfiction, History, Linguistics, Irish Literature

303 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2007

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Irish make up one of the biggest ethnic groups in the English speaking world of Britain, the USA, and Australia. As the first colony of England, where much of later British imperialist policies were perfected and tested, the Irish were the laborers, the soldiers, and the maids of the Anglo rulers in the United States and Britain. Irish women were especially popular in the States as servants because they spoke English. However, it is very easy to forget that the Irish's native language is not English, but Irish-Gaelic.

Yet, for a group whom was so emerged in English speaking culture after they were conquered by the English, and crushed over and over again in rebellions, very little of the Irish language appears to have influenced the English, at least according to most mainstream English dictionaries, like Oxford. In "How the Irish Invented Slang", Daniel Cassidy lays out an argument that most English linguistic study have all overlooked the Irish influence, most because much of the words come from working class language of the Irish slums, and therefore much of our "colorful" language actually is descended from the Irish Gaelic language, though the spelling has changed and origin was often listed as "unknown" by the scholars. Therefore, Irish-Americans can take heart that their language is still spoken in the bars and streets across the US, especially amongst working people.

He explores popular songs, like railroad songs, cowboy songs, and baseball songs, to how the Irish influenced popular card game lingo, to cowboy lingo, to how the book and movie "Gangs of New York" got the name of the gang Dead Rabbits completely wrong. In the back is a nice dictionary of words that Cassidy attributes to being descended from Irish-Gaelic, a language not crushed out of existence by Anglo culture after all. For examples, listed below are 45 slang/descended-from-slang words which Cassidy attributes to the working-class Irish.

1. Babe (sexually attractive young woman)
2. Baloney (as in foolishness)
3. Bee's Wax (as in "none of your…")
4. Booze
5. Brat
6. Chuck (as in "to throw")
7. Cop (as in policeman)
8. Dork
9. Dude
10. Fluke
11. Freak
12. Gams (as in legs)
13. Geek
14. Guzzle
15. Hick (as in peasant or country fool)
16. Honky
17. Jerk
18. Lunch
19. Lick (as in to beat someone)
20. Ma/Pa
21. Mug (as in someone's face)
22. Malarkey (foolish talk)
23. Mutt
24. Phoney
25. Pussy (as in vagina, or whiner)
26. Puss (as in mouth or lips)
27. Slugger (as in baseball hitter)
28. Queer (as in odd)
29. Razzamatazz (showing off, high spirits)
30. Root (as in to cheer for)
31. Slew (as in large number, a whole… of 'em)
32. Shanty
33. Shindig (party)
34. Shoo
35. Whiskey
36. Skinny (inside information)
37. Slacker
38. Slogan
39. Smack (as in to hit)
40. Sock (as in to punch)
41. Spunk (spirit, energy, semen)
42. Sucker (as in fool)
43. Taunt
44. Yacking
45. Yellow (as in cowardly)

This is a great book for anyone curious about language and why certain words arose. In a country where working people are often slammed for their language as being outrageous or overly emotional or dramatic or offensive, and while working people are told how stupid they are for they way in which they talk or continuingly corrected their entire lives, it's very nice to read a history of where those "dirty words of the rabble" come from. It's nice to not feel stupid when people are talking about language for once.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personally, I think Cassidy goes to far and puts forward probably cognates as actual etymology, such as actually bothering to try and say we say "Mommy" and "Daddy" due to the Irish. But, the book is fun and convincing that he has actually cleared up a lot of "derivation unknown" slang, like "case the joint", "Dead Rabbit", "jazz", etc. Regardless of how valid the linguistics, the plethora of period quotes, newspaper excerpts, etc. and underworld details make this a fun read, even the dictionary portion.

A fun, whimsical assault on language history, this has the cartoonish appeal that could be make it a light, opening featurette to one of my fave books, John McWhorter's "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English".

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to believe all of the etymologies in the book so bad.

Multiple things going for it. Here are two,
1. It is mad suspicious that there are so few words attributed to Irish in the English language (reference works would have you believe that Celtic languages stopped influencing English as soon as the Anglo-Saxons stepped foot on Brittonic soil)
2. Slang tends to come from marginalized communities

So, when Cassidy suggests that “scam” (EN) comes from “is cam é” (GA, meaning “it is a deceit, it is a trick”, contracted to "‘s cam é" before making its way to English)—yeah. Makes sense. I’m on board.

“Fil-i-me-oo-re-i-re-ay” (EN) as a nonsensical syllabic phrase in a song called “Paddy Works on the Erie”? Not buying it. “Fillfidh mé uair éirithe“ (GA, meaning “time to get up, I’ll go back”) being a refrain? Not only am I buying it, I bought it and live there.

Most multi-word phrases in Irish or compound words in Irish that translate to one word (or weird phrases, eg “Shan Van Vocht” (EN) coming from “Seanbhean Bhocht” (GA) meaning poor old woman, in both languages), I’m ready to believe.

Some things I’m a little more skeptical about. Cassidy himself points out similarities in Irish and Gaelic (ie Scots Gaelic) words (eg "faro" (EN), a card game centered around turns, and "fiaradh" (GA and GD), meaning turning). Which just means that the origin is a bit murky because there are multiple influences.

Other things I’m very skeptical about. For example, “spiel” (EN) is mentioned in the introduction for the meaning “a sharp, persuasive talk, used to entice a listener” and is attributed to Irish “speal” meaning “using cutting words” cf “spealadh” (GA) meaning “using sharp, ready spoken, satirical, spoofing words”. Later, Cassidy says that “spiel” is often misattributed to the German “spiel”. But I’d always been told that “spiel” (EN) comes from the Yiddish “shpil”. Did Irish influence Yiddish? Did Yiddish influence Irish? Do we have a corned beef situation? A reversed corned beef? (Context: corned beef is often seen by non-Irish Americans as Irish American fiction. “The Irish don’t get corned beef” -an Irish person (probably). That is kinda true but also false. Corned beef was eaten in Ireland until the English decided that they wanted everyone except the Irish to be able to eat (ie buy) beef. The Irish, having lost access to beef, turned to meats like pork. Upon moving to the States, the Irish found that they were not considered white here either and lived with other nonwhite groups, one of these groups being Jewish Americans. They relied heavily on goods and services provided by their new neighbors, as they didn’t have access to anything else. Kosher butcheries don’t sell pork, on account of it not being kosher, but they do sell beef and sold it at a price the Irish Americans could afford. Corned beef enters the scene once more. Ergo, you have a rather singular Irish American identification with corned beef, not because the Irish elsewhere would never do such a thing, but because of what was and was not made available to Irish people by the powers-that-be.)

Those are just some examples to get to my point, which is: outside of Cassidy's knowledge of New York slang (from his grandfather's time, born 1895, to his own), he has to rely heavily on available reference work (dictionaries). Sometimes (“scam”), it makes sense. Other times, I’m not sure how much we can trust it. That’s not because I think Cassidy is being willfully ignorant of other evidence but because the available references are so lacking. Dictionaries don’t make an exception for Irish. That is to say, they ignore any language spoken by people they believe (or wish to be) irrelevant to their language's development.

TL;DR Irish has had more influence on English than anyone before Cassidy was prepared to admit in an academic setting and Cassidy makes a compelling case for the words he has included in this work. However, I’m not prepared to say that some of this isn’t folk etymology, incorrectly attributing something to Irish that it borrowed from another language, or something else, just because so much additional work needs to be done (to supplement Cassidy's work or reproduce it) to recognize what languages outside of German, French, Latin, and Greek have influenced English. Regardless, worth the read because of the evidence that it does have and the recognition it gives to the influence of the Irish that is often ignored even though almost 10% of US Americans still claim Irish ancestry.

[Seán · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is pure fiction. Cassidy was a fantasist and it is incredible to me that he managed to hold down a job as an academic. The level of his scholarship is ridiculously low. An intelligent elementary school child could do better. And in case people think I'm just sounding off for the sake of it, here are a few facts. A great many of the phrases that Cassidy claims as the "origin" of obscure words in American slang are complete fabrications. If you look up uath dubh, sách úr, béal ónna, bocaí rua, teas ioma, naíon ar chuma bub and a host of other Cassidy compositions on Google, you will find that there are no references apart from those relating to Cassidy. If you look up a few common Irish phrases (real ones, that is) you will find the opposite. They get lots of hits from lots of sources, proving that they are real Irish phrases used by Irish speakers. Try it with, for example, "cothrom na Féinne", or "púca na sméar". Then, to prove to yourself once and for all that this book is a worthless pile of buffalo-chips, try looking up the origin of some of the words that Cassidy claims come from Irish, words like giggle, clamour, racket, quirk(y), mayhem. All of these words entered English centuries before the Irish flooded into the slums of NY and other cities. So how could they come from Irish? At a push, there might be ten correct entries in the book but that is really pushing it. The vast majority of this book is just embarrassing nonsense.

[Eingram]

Ben gave me this book and I didn't read it for a long time because it was in a box. Honestly I didn't even read all of it now because it is TERRIBLE. Interesting concept, but bad, bad research and execution. I'm sure some of those words did come from Irish/Gaelic, but a lot of them I've never heard of and please come up with a better way to present them than flitting about history throwing them in everywhere you can. I'm not even sure the author read over his own book once he put the chapters together, because he repeats himself a lot.
Apologies to Ben. It does look interesting at a glance.

[Ryan Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know Irish. I speak Irish. It's always bothered me how so many Irish words sound like English words that are similar in sound. AND those English words have NOTHING to do with a similar English word like "Raspberries." Now I can sleep at night. (The book makes so much more sense if you can speak "as Gaeilge."

[Brian McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A more astounding book about word etymology than I would have ever imagined. I had always thought most English words were derived from old Germanic or French or Greek. The influence of the native Irish language was an unacknowledged secret until this book brought it out. A real head-slapper.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have in fact only finished reading the first 80 pages or so which constitute the actual book part presenting the author's ideas, the remaining almost 200 pages are a dictionary of examples of Irish words and their possible English slang offspring. These pages will sit alongside by Irish language materials as an encouragement to continue my studies of that language.

The late Daniel Cassidy published this explanation of how Irish was the source for a range of English slang phrases back in 2007. About 80 pages of the book consist of 8 chapters of discussion of various examples of how selected English slang words could be traced by the author back to an Irish root word. The roughly 200 more pages are presented as a ‘dictionary’ of further possible examples.

Digging through the internet archives it clearly caused quite a stir as a number of regular contributors to the conversation about language, languages, and usage, raised serious objections to Cassidy’s theories and especially their presentation as apparent fact in the book. Tracking down some of the surviving internet blog posts and other discussion, there appears to be also some history between Cassidy and his critics predating the book’s publication. The controversy could be summed up as criticism of Cassidy’s methodology or rather lack thereof and possibly some reflection of a prolonged somewhat private earlier conversation. At this remove from the original release of the book there seems as much smoke as fire with perhaps wounded sensitivities further complicating the matter. It is perhaps worth noting that Cassidy’s publisher does not appear, by its catalog, to be a regular publisher of serious, weighty, academic tomes of the type that professors and those who want to be professors write and publish which would support an argument that Cassidy’s work does not stand up to academic scrutiny.

All of that said, I enjoyed the book tremendously as great fun (and an encouragement in some ways to carry on with my studies of the Irish language). It will remain on my shelf next to my (legitimate) Irish dictionaries and texts as an augmentation of the Irish vocabularies presented in the legitimate textbooks. I was able to track down some of the criticisms of Cassidy’s work and his book that have appeared on the Internet since it first appeared and for the most part the critiques are persuasive – if sometimes seemingly tinged with more emotion than a straight up disagreement in the faculty lounge (though I know perfectly well just how intense those can be). I can sympathize with the frustration that such exchanges can generate (recalling Churchill’s definition of a fanatic as someone who won’t change their mind and won’t change the subject) having myself been presented with similar challenges over the years. But I can also enjoy hearing out interesting and novel ideas about how people talk to each other as it reflects the experience of my own family which has an internal dialect drawing upon English, French, Russian, Vietnamese, Yiddish, German, Irish, Gaelic, and Klingon.

[Kevin Cain · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s satisfying to resolve the mystery of how millions of Irish could pour into America and other parts of the world in the mid-1800s and leave no impression on the language. Like the author, I too found it curious. We always had family sayings that felt likely to be holdovers and I presumed a desire to assimilate led to the shedding of the mother tongue.
‘Holy cow!’ After reading the 217 pages of English slang, it’s clear those Irish were not linguistic ‘slackers’. Because, like other newcomers to America, they were treated with mistrust and skepticism, many of the Irish phrases and words got categorized as ‘slang’; the derisive term the proper English slap on unacceptable or vulgar words. Well, unacceptable or vulgar to the ears of the well-to-do.
I particularly appreciate the author listing the accepted English dictionary etymology for some of the slang words alongside the direct meaning of the Irish word whose phonetic (or butchered) pronunciation closely matches for the more ridiculous accepted etymologies. They make it clear that in a reasonable world no one could could legitimately deny the Irish derivation is the true source as the meaning is the most direct.
So the Irish impact is nothing at which to ‘sneeze’ it turns out. It just took some time spent in the mouths of street gangs, gamblers, gangsters, musicians, and sports players before words like phoney, poker, crony, jazz, razzmatazz, and slugger became accepted through continual use.
‘Gee whiz’, it’s satisfying and enough to make me ‘giggle’ that what some consider ‘gibberish’ is Irish ‘galore’.

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed getting the chance to read this book.

I myself have often wondered what happened to thr Irish language and why it was nowhere to be seen in the English language. This book helped me to feel more connected to my ancestors and helped me to feel more seen.

This book explores so much history and really shows how much Irish is in the English language. There is also so many surprising facts about what was thought to be one thing turned out to be Irish.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book and Cassidy obviously angered some of the snooty academics he criticized in the book. The big criticism of the book is that modern native Irish speakers don’t approve of his interpretations of the language into American (New York) English of Irish terms. The problem with this of course is that the people who spoke this form of Irish came to New York in the aftermath of the Famine. Last count there were three modern dialects of Irish and though speakers of different dialects can understand each other, their use of local slang is precisely the thing which makes them all....different dialects. So it’s very possible that words that had currency in early to mid 19th century Ireland, among peasants of the West, slowly fell into misuse after they had left Ireland but continued to be used in America. Pre-Famine Ireland was markedly different from Post-Famine Ireland especially in the accelerated decline of the language and the conscious turning away from all things Gaelic. After all many words and phrases from 19th century American English are either no longer used today or have evolved into different usage. Few people today speak like Abraham Lincoln, Wyatt Earp or Teddy Roosevelt. It’s unrealistic to think that the loss of 1 million speakers of Irish didn’t somehow affect the language either at home or abroad. But leave it to the Irish to condemn anything they haven’t thought of themselves, let alone something written by a Yank. Interestingly a modern historian has theorized that New York born gangster/cowboy Billy The Kid was a native Irish speaker who would have learned Irish growing up probably in the Five Points ghetto - recent evidence which supports Cassidys theory but which is conveniently ignored by his critics.

[Hannah]

A fascinating, maddening read - the central thesis (much American slang of unknown origin is actually straight from Gaelic) is compelling, and the surrounding sociology is interesting, but the organization makes it very difficult to read fluently. Every Irish-derived word is bolded and followed by the definition of the source word in parentheses, even if the same word was defined one page before. Many of the stories and sociological observations are used as connective tissue between definitions rather than fully explained. And Cassidy spends too much time detailing convoluted outdated etymologies for words which he then proves must surely be Irish in origin - after the first few times, I was happy to assume that there were plenty of bunk (contraction of bunkum - buanchumadh, pron. bun cume, n. perpetual invention, a long made-up story, a shaggy dog tale) explanations to be had and I just wanted to get to the true stuff. It's a great thesis, though, and the dictionary which comprises the second half of the book is amazing.

Incidentally, the most surprising bit of the book to me, and one I wanted to see explored much further: many words we think of as African-American slang (jazz, you dig, daddy-o) are also Gaelic in origin, probably because there used to be a lot of African-American native speakers of Gaelic, including Dizzy Gillespie's family. For real! There's your sequel, Daniel Cassidy, come on!

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't normally read non-fiction, but if I could find more non-fiction like this, that might change. My mother is taking an Irish history class, and she chose this book to do a book report on. She enjoyed it a great deal, so I decided to read it too. Only about 80 pages of the book is writing by the author, the rest is a Gaelic-English dictionary, so it's a much shorter read than it leads you to believe.
Unbeknownst to me, there was a consensus among linguists that, unlike almost every other language of people who assimilated into the english speaking world, no gaelic remained in modern speech. The author, given a dictionary of gaelic words from a friend who passed away, with no background in the language, looked up one word a night in honor of his friends memory. He started to see a pattern when he compared definitions and their pronunciations. Rather than not leaving a mark at all, the language left huge swaths of words taken directly from the gaelic and infused into street talk, slang, and terms particularly centered around gambling and cheating, which the Irish essentially ran in the 1800's clear across the country.
Words like slugger, scam, slum, poker, jazz, crony, phoney, shindig, finagle, baloney and countless others have almost exact pronunciations and meaning taken from Gaelic. A fascinating read. It makes me wonder about all the things we think we know and understand, but really don't.

[Mira · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is incredible. It goes through a mass of words and traces their history from America back to the depths of Irish pre-history in some cases.
Most interesting parts are on words used in gambling that reach back to almost mythological meanings in Celtic culture and gambs (legs!).

Also interesting how African, Italian and Irish Americans blended language as a way to confuse the Republican elite in matters of business and crime and general joking around. Two can play at the doublespeak game...eh?

I'd like to see a book written like this about Australian words...I'm sure sheila (woman) comes from Sheila Na Gig...hahaha

[Victory Wong]

I read about this book in "Ask a Mexican!" In the village voice-- he didn't really say much beyond it's good but I have always been interested in linguistic history and facts so I think I'd like this.

[Padraic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Either he's right or he's wrong. I still don't know.

Good question though: how could a language spoken by so many disappear so quickly?

Explains why my mom used to call me an amadan.

[Sara]

I really am reading this, it's just kind of slow going.


Hahahah, who am I kidding: I am never going to finish this book. I am having a hard time buying the premise.

[Erin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great premise, but the writing style did not impress.

[Blessy]

brilliant

[Under_rubble · Rating 1 out of 5]

Probably the worst edited thing I have ever read.

[Houdini Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it has a few essays, this book is more about etymology, and has great glossary.

[Paul Roper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and it explained an awful lot of words I have known all my life.

[Olga Werby · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those interested the origins of phrases like “say uncle,” check out Daniel Cassidy’s “How the Irish Invented Slang.” This is a fascinating read for English speakers.