Scotched !

[Bugbear]

I was going to look it up in a dictionary of word origens, but someone with the OED aught to handle that.

I don't hear "Scotch" being used in place of "Scot," or "Scots," over here, except in the case of "Scotch-Irish."

Usually it is "Scottish."

My family had a celebration "Scotch-Irish Day," and it was a pun on the drinking. They don't drink anymore, so now "Scotch" is a double pun; they scotched the scotch. Just in case you come across my thread on that BECAUSE I didn't point out the pun too well, and I don't think it came across as I planned. Aye, "of mice and men."

[Coinneach]

My OED says "the contraction of Scottish into Scotch is not recorded before 1570 (in the compound Scotchman), though the colloquial pronunciation which it represents may well be much older; instances of Scotch cap, Scotch jig occur in 1591–99, but the adj. did not become common in literature until the second half of the 17th c. "

[macwilkin]

The Welsh people have had much the same to contend with, being called Welch when Scots were called Scotch. Two of their regiments were titled the (23rd) Royal Welch Fusiliers (which they have always kept) and the (41st) Welch Regiment (which was changed latterly to Welsh).

Actually, you believe Robert Graves, the 23rd preferred being called "Welch" instead of "Welsh". Graves felt that the spelling "disassociated us [The RWF] from the modern North Wales of chapels, liberalism, the dairy and drapery business, Lloyd George and the tourist trade." (Farwell, Mr. Kipling's Army, p. 34)

T.

[macwilkin]

I was going to look it up in a dictionary of word origens, but someone with the OED aught to handle that.

I don't hear "Scotch" being used in place of "Scot," or "Scots," over here, except in the case of "Scotch-Irish."

Usually it is "Scottish."

My family had a celebration "Scotch-Irish Day," and it was a pun on the drinking. They don't drink anymore, so now "Scotch" is a double pun; they scotched the scotch. Just in case you come across my thread on that BECAUSE I didn't point out the pun too well, and I don't think it came across as I planned. Aye, "of mice and men."

Ted,

The preferred term is "Scots-Irish" or "Ulster-Scots", although one of the best one-volume histories of the Ulster diaspora is "The Scotch-Irish" by James Leyburn.

T.

[Bugbear]

Ted,

The preferred term is "Scots-Irish" or "Ulster-Scots", although one of the best one-volume histories of the Ulster diaspora is "The Scotch-Irish" by James Leyburn.

T.

Thanks. I'm wondering if I would notice much of a difference between "Scotch-Irish," and "Scots-Irish" if it were being spoken. I was thinking of what I here in conversation; not that I here the term very often.