Meanings
- archaicpluralplural onlyThe Celtic people of Ireland.
the whole Irishry of rebels
1649, J[ohn] Milton, ΕΙΚΟΝΟΚΛΆΣΤΗΣ [Eikonoklástēs] […], London: […] Matthew Simmons, […], →OCLC2 more examples
A big bark nosed cautiously out of the mist, and was received with shouts and cries of, "Come along, darlin'," from the Irishry.
1896 November – 1897 May, Rudyard Kipling, “Captains Courageous”, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, published 1897, →OCLCSome 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
1938, Robert Ervin Howard, chapter 1, in (Black Vulmea's Vengeance)
plural Irishries
- A distinctively Irish mannerism or expression; an Irishism.
“[…] every morning he used to sing delectable Irishries I’ve never heard repeated.”
1995, William J. Leonard, Where Thousands Fell, →ISBN, page 2622 more examples
Nor perhaps would it so much have mattered if it were Dorothy alone who was (to say an Irishry) drifting apart.
1906, Appleton’s Booklovers Magazine, volume 7, page 59And 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’.
2022, George Craig, “Solitude of the Translator”, in Jan Steyn, editor, Translation: Crafts, Contexts, Consequences, →ISBN, page 9 - historicalIn medieval Ireland, a territory inhabited by Irish people following their own customs.
By the sixteenth century there is unmistakable evidence of a division of the county into an Englishry and an Irishry […]
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, →ISBN1 more example
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.
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
Origin
Cite this entry
Irishry. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Irishry
“Irishry.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Irishry. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Irishry,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Irishry.
Source: Irishry on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.