Irishry

English

Etymology

Irish +‎ -ry

Noun

Irishry pl (plural only)

1. (archaic) The Celtic people of Ireland.

   Coordinate term: Englishry

   • 1649, J[ohn] Milton, ΕΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΆΣΤΗΣ [Eikonoklástēs] […], London: […] Matthew Simmons, […], →OCLC:

     the whole Irishry of rebels

   • 1896 November – 1897 May, Rudyard Kipling, “Captains Courageous”, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, published 1897, →OCLC:

     A big bark nosed cautiously out of the mist, and was received with shouts and cries of, "Come along, darlin'," from the Irishry.

   • 1938, Robert Ervin Howard, chapter 1, in (Black Vulmea's Vengeance)::

     Some of the peasants escaped the massacre and were hiding in the thickets. As soon as you left they came out, and not being civilized, cultured Englishmen, but only poor, savage Irishry, they cut me down along with the others

Noun

Irishry (plural Irishries)

1. A distinctively Irish mannerism or expression; an Irishism.
   • 1906, Appleton’s Booklovers Magazine‎^[1], volume 7, page 59:

     Nor perhaps would it so much have mattered if it were Dorothy alone who was (to say an Irishry) drifting apart.

   • 1995, William J. Leonard, Where Thousands Fell, →ISBN, page 262:

     “ […] every morning he used to sing delectable Irishries I’ve never heard repeated.”

   • 2022, George Craig, “Solitude of the Translator”, in Jan Steyn, editor, Translation: Crafts, Contexts, Consequences, →ISBN, page 9:

     And he is very much aware of the danger of overindulging in Irishries: in a letter to Barbara Brey he mentions a translation he himself has done […] and says of his own contribution: ‘a bit too free and Irish’.

2. (historical) In medieval Ireland, a territory inhabited by Irish people following their own customs.

   Coordinate terms: Englishry, Welshry

   • 1999, Steven G. Ellis, “The English State and its Frontiers in the British Isles, 1300–1600”, in Daniel Power, Naomi Standen, editors, Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700, →ISBN, page 157:

     For the period to 1300, Wales and Ireland may be described as frontiers of settlement, where ‘Englishries’ (areas of intensive English settlement) were interspersed with ‘Irishries’ and ‘Welshries’ (areas of native rule), so creating multiple, localised frontiers […] rather than consolidated blocs.

   • 2000, Howard B. Clarke, “Decolonization and the dynamics of urban decline in Ireland, 1300–1550”, in T. R. Slater, editor, Towns in Decline, AD 100–1600‎^[2], →ISBN:

     By the sixteenth century there is unmistakable evidence of a division of the county into an Englishry and an Irishry […]