Meanings
- derogatoryinformalBadly written or ungrammatical Welsh, often written with machine translation.
“Witcher Welsh” and Scymraeg share the same problem: well-meaning people trying to use Welsh without taking it seriously.
2020 February 18, Lane Greene, “Fighting the scourge of “Scum Welsh””, in 1843 Magazine, The Economist, archived from the original on 31 Dec 20243 more examples
Soon the term Scymraeg, or scummy Welsh, was born and it has really caught on - it is part of Gary's stand-up routine, and examples are posted via a Twitter hashtag and in a Flickr group.
2018 July 31, Rory Cellan-Jones, “Google Translate serves up 'scummy Welsh' translations”, in BBC News, archived from the original on 17 Apr 2019, retrieved 01 Dec 2025And Google Translate—infamous since 2009 for its Scymraeg, or scummy Welsh—has, according to the BBC, recently taken a great leap forward in terms of the accuracy and quality of its Welsh translations.
2019 August 7, Stephen Harrison, “Welsh Wikipedia Gives Me Hope”, in Slate, archived from the original on 02 Dec 2019, retrieved 01 Dec 2025I’m pissing in the wind here, obviously, but this isn’t some funny “Scymraeg” scenario, this is public money being spent on a bilingual website that only works in English.
2025 April 1, Nic Dafies, Tŵt Cymru, MastodonSynonyms: scummy Welsh
Synonyms & antonyms
proper nounBadly written or ungrammatical Welsh, often written with machine translation.
Origin
- WelshScymraeg
- EnglishScymraeg
Unadapted borrowing from Welsh Scymraeg.
More words from Welsh
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Scymraeg. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Scymraeg
“Scymraeg.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Scymraeg. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Scymraeg,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Scymraeg.
Source: Scymraeg on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.