Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Tuesday 18 June 2024

Interesting Cultural Appropriation.

The craque about craic
which means a good conversational time
often, in the case of men, with badinage.

The Irish commandeered
the Northern English and Scottish word crack

(which I remember being widely used
in my 1940s Belfast childhood,
prefixed by great or good)

as they did with jig (formerly gigg*) from gigue,
borrowed from French :

craque : tall tale, amusing fiction.

*gigg popped up again in the 19th century
in the term sheela-ny-gigg in which both Gs are hard.



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