shoneen

S1H4O1N1E1E1N1
/ˈʃəʊniːn/

noun

An Irish person considered excessively Anglophile, an Irish person who acts English or desires to be part of English society.

Similar
West Britjackeen
OriginIrish Seoinín →
Scrabble 10
Ask AI about this wordChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

Meanings

nounshoneen (plural shoneens)

plural shoneens

  1. IrelandderogatoryethnicslurAn Irish person considered excessively Anglophile, an Irish person who acts English or desires to be part of English society.

    Good Father John O'Hart / In penal days rode out / To a shoneen who had free lands / And his own snipe and trout.

    1889, W B Yeats, The Ballad of Father O'Hart
    1 more example

    So then the citizens begin talking about the Irish language and the corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can’t speak their own language […].

    1922 February 2, James Joyce, “[Episode 12: Cyclops]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company […], →OCLC, part II [Odyssey], page 297

    Synonyms: West Brit, jackeen

Synonyms & antonyms

nounAn Irish person considered excessively Anglophile, an Irish person who acts English or desires to be part of English society.

Similar
West Britjackeen
Also see
west briton

Origin

  1. IrishSeoinín“Johnny”
  2. Englishshoneen

Borrowed from Irish Seoinín (“Johnny”), from Seán (“John, John Bull”) + -ín (diminutive suffix).

More words from Irish

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

shoneen. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shoneen

MLA

“shoneen.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shoneen. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “shoneen,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/shoneen.

Source: shoneen on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.