Gallivanting malarkey

Colm O'Regan grew up on a farm but went to school in Cork City where he had to endure slaggin' about wellies and silage from wannabee urban corner-boys. But he was quick on his feet and on the uptake, so didn't let his head get flushed down the t'ilet by the bigger lads. We was always alert to words, how they are spoke and went viral on Twitter with @irishmammies. I've snagged his most recent published e-book: Gallivanting With Words: How the Irish Speak English (2025) although would be grand altogether to absorb it parallel-text as an earbook. But you can hear him innerviewed by Oliver "RTE" Callan on RTE [L]. Heard on the Luas [p158/468] “will wanayiz gerrup and leave the old man sit dow-en”, for example, really needs both the audio and the transcript. At the mo' only his book Climate Worrier is on borrowbox audio.

I have to say that I really enjoyed this book: he's not afraid to use tech-linguistic terms and has not been superficial in his research but is laugh-out-loud funny on the reg'lar.  Gallivanting is a standard, if old-fashioned, English word but in Ireland is only used to 'give out' when someone has been having too much of it. Malarkey sounds like a Hiberno-English word but actually isn't and wordies can't even agree on the etymology.

Technical terms, is it? How about words for the state of being intoxicated? balubas - banjaxed - banjoed - blootered fluthered - hammered - in a hape - langers - locked - mawldy - ossified -paralytic - polluted - scuttered - stocious -well on. I've gone alphabetical, O'Regan put more effort into the task and sorted them in order of inebriation. He clearly has more experience in these matters

In 2017, The Blob went briefly viral over the etymology of Lack Déise-speak for girl-friend. I concluded that a Russian origin was probably Бoллiж with a borrowing from Shelta, the argot of travellers, being much more likely. O'Regan concludes [p171/468]: lackeen (‘girl’) comes from cailín by back-slang. It may also derive from shelta, mind you. Back-slang? That's central to verlan, the Parisian argot of the streets. There femme becomes meuf. New-to-me [p.173/468]: in Shelta buffer means Other or Outsider cf gaijin = goyim = gentile. Me, I've been using the self-descriptor "Old Buffer" here and on my LinkedIn page. 

O'Regan is in the Irish Examiner every Friday. His HomePage - somebody should really float him a Wikipedia page.

fn on Oliver Callan. He came over my horizon in the 00s with a weekly dose of satire on the wireless called Callan's Kicks. It was described by The Sunday Independent as "the best comedy show the national broadcaster has ever produced".  I thought it was woeful: Callan doing silly voices sounding like politicians and celebs is not satire the way Spitting Image was satire. I had to leave the kitchen when he came on; or grin and bear it on the car radio. More recently, he's got a life as a radio journalist in his own voice, taking the reins of the morning Pat Kenny Show from Ryan "lightweight overpaid" Tubridy and he's really good: articulate, sharp, interested.