This glossary only contains items specific to issues discussed in this book. For reasons of space, general terms found in books on varieties of English have not been included.

ascendancy Originally a reference to the Protestant ruling class in eighteenthcentury Ireland. It later came to refer, as a rather vague term, to a putative Protestant elite in Ireland, usually on country estates.

Belfast The capital of Ulster at the estuary of the river Lagan in the north-east of the country. It was founded in the seventeenth century and expanded greatly with the development of such industries as ship-building in the nineteenth century. Linguistically, it is an amalgam of Ulster Scots and mid Ulster English inputs along with independent developments of its own, especially in the last century. It is largely Protestant, though west Belfast has a Catholic majority.

blarney An impressionistic term for flattering, cloying speech which is supposed to be typical of the Irish. It has been known in this sense since the time of Elizabeth I who is reputed to have used the term. The term derives from a stone on a rampart of Blarney Castle near Cork city which is supposed to give anyone who kisses it ‘the gift of the gab’.

brogue A term stemming from the Irish word either for ‘shoe’ (bróg) or ‘a knot in the tongue’ (barróg teangan). The label has been used in the past four centuries for any strongly local accent of Irish English. Occasionally, the term is used outside Ireland as in ‘Ocracoke Brogue’ to refer to the local accent of offshore islands in North Carolina.