English Language FAQ

Don't shoot me I'm only the piano accordion player! Cat (a): dreadful, no good, awful, very bad. Or for a more emphatic version,  Cat melodeon ( Sounds like 'melojen') So what were the 2016 European Championships like then? To use a technical term popular in rural Sligo, cat melodeon.  Eamon Sweeeny, The Irish Independent, 2016 Bernard Share’s dictionary of Irish slang  Slanguage quotes Victoria White in the Irish Times calling cat melodeon “the greatest expression in Hiberno-English.”  The word cat  is used to express disappointment in the quality of something: the food is cat in that place. Where does Cat Melodeon come from? The Cat Melodeon players In his book on Irish traditional music, Ciaran Carson suggests it is a joking reference to the  musicianship:  of  piano-accordion players (who often refer to their instruments as melodeons) to play two notes at once.   Source     As the nephew of a fine melodeon player, I think this is cat altogether  -   you throw

Photo by  Brett Jordan  on  Unsplash

The  Levites  sound the trumpet of Jubilee (1873 illustration) J ubilee is an interesting example of a word that evolved to cover two distinct but connected meanings. 

The Rorschach test is a diagnostic tool used to gain psychological insight. It uses 10 standard black or coloured inkblot designs to assess personality traits and emotional tendencies. In contemporary English, the term  Rorschach test is often used metaphorically to describe what psychologists call projective assessment. Put simply, how you see something depends on your 'priors' or pre-existing assumptions. Who was Rorschach? Hermann Rorschach (1884–1922) invented the 'ink blot' personality test. The test emerged from the Swiss psychiatrist's lifelong passion for klecksography - turning inkblots into recognisable images. Influenced by the newly emerging field of psychoanalysis, Rorschach began exploring how emotion shapes perception.    Rorschach had an unusual childhood. He was born into an an artistic family but lost both his parents at an early age and was brought up by a cold and distant stepmother. At school he was prodigy - speaking several languages and exce

Everything about the word hooley is disputed, including the spelling. Hoolie  or  hooley ?   Or even huly as it first appeared Bartlett's Dictionary of American English in 1877.  Something to argue about at the lexicographers annual hoolie , which can get pretty wild. A hoolie is used in contemporary English to mean a raucous party . The word is most commonly used in Ireland, but can be traced back to Orkney Scots, where it meant a strong wind or gale. This lead to the common idiom blowing up a hooley. Irish Words in English