Meanings
plural Galoshins
- ScotlandA mummer or guiser who performs in a midwinter Mummers play.
The only exception to this is the full text of a guising, or Galoshin, play from Balmaghie.
2009, Stephen Miller, “'I HAVE THE PROSPECT OF GOING TO GALLOWAY': THE REV. WALTER GREGOR AND THE ETHNOGRAPHIC SURVEY OF THE UNITED KINGDOM”, in Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society3 more examples
In they stalk, got up in grotesque improvisations of mumming costume, and each armed with a wooden sword, and garrying a ghostly lantern hollowed out of a giant turnip, “Hara domes in Galoshin,” as that individual himself informs the company —being doubtless the traditional representative of some forgotten Templar Knight; and presently he is engaged in a sanguinary hand-to-hand encounter with another wooden-sworded champion upon the floor.
1888, “Hallowmas Eve”, in The Illustrated London News, volume 93, page 498This is especially true of the Galoshins plays where his fixation on numbers and line lengths led him to mistake the nature of the play.
2012, E Cass, “The James Madison Carpenter Collection of British Folk Plays”, in Folklore, volume 123, number 1Referred to as Daft Days by the Galoshin mummers in Scotland, this was a liminal period when normal conventions were in abeyance and abnormal conduct was permitted.
2012, Robert Wyndham Nicholls, The Jumbies’ Playing Ground, →ISBN, page 23
Origin
From the name of a play by Guizard, and the title character of that play.
Full word history & related roots →Rhymes & wordplay
Anagrams
Cite this entry
Galoshin. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Galoshin
“Galoshin.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Galoshin. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Galoshin,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Galoshin.
Source: Galoshin on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.