St Patrick’s Day gets millions of people parading the streets clad in green clothes, with shamrocks painted on their face, celebrating Irish culture.
Thanks to the hard graft of Irish migrants, Paddy’s Day is celebrated all over the world in 2025.
From Sydney to Santiago, Dublin to Dubai, and Tokyo to Toronto, you’re bound to found some craic. Only St Nick could compete for the title of the world’s favourite saint.
But you might encounter Irish words and phrases more often than you think.
Some of our most beloved slang and terminology has roots in the Irish language, known to its speakers as Gaeilge
From the nickname of the Conservative Party to our slang for having fun, and one of Britain’s favourite drinks, many have a surprising origin on the island of Ireland.
Craic
‘What’s the craic’, you might ask your friends as an alternative to ‘what’s the story’ or ‘what’s happening’ when you meet them for a couple of pints down the pub.
And you’ll be sure to have some ‘craic’ once the juices are flowing.
It needs little explanation, but for the unacquainted, it’s a word meaning fun or a good time, that’s entered English from Ireland.
But its origin is a little more complicated than that.
Testament to the exchange of culture across these isles, craic actually started off inBritain.
It was picked up from the Scots and northeast English word ‘crack’, meaning loud gossip, banter or bragging.
Craic then acquired its characteristic Irish spelling, and it has kept this since returning to popular use in England.
Galore
This word for ‘abundance’ – you’ve got Guinness galore – has a slightly less grand meaning in the original Irish.
It’s the anglicised spelling of ‘go leoir’, meaning ‘enough’, which was picked up by English speakers some 400 years ago.
Hooligan
Conjouring images of a drunken rabble brawling after a football match, this word for a violent troublemaker actually comes from an Irish family name.
Variously spelled Houlihan, O’Houlihan or Ó hUallacháin, the English term ‘hooligan’ first entered print in 19th century police reports on young gangs in London.
It was popularised around the start of the 20th century, possibly due to its use as the name for a fictional rowdy Irish family in a music hall song.
Slogan
It might be strange to think that every political campaign, commercial advertisement and the occasional school group project has its own ‘battle cry’.
But that’s exactly what slogan means in the Old Irish and Gàidhlig – Scottish Gaelic – it’s derived from.
Slogan came to English as ‘sluagh ghairm’ – the words for ‘army’ or ‘crowd’ plus ‘cry’.
The term now has the same meaning in Irish and Scots Gaelic as it does in English.
Smithereens
The exact origin of this word is still up for debate, but it’s likely it came from the Irish word ‘smidiríní’, meaning ‘little bits’.
Smidiríní is derived from ‘smiodar’, which means a fragment’, with the addition of the ‘een’ sound indicating something is small.
Ter ar wack
A colloquialism from Liverpool, this somewhat old-fashioned farewell reflects the sheer scale of Irish migration to and through this port city.
Millions arrived in the decades after the ‘famine’ of the 1840s. By 1851, a fifth of the city’s population was Irish, many of them living in damp, overcrowded cellars prone to flooding.
An estimated 75% of Liverpool’s population has some Irish ancestry, and you can see that in the local slange.
‘Ter ar wack’ is believed to originate from the Irish phrase, ‘tabhair aire, a mhac’.
Pronounced almost identically, it means ‘take care son’.
Tory
How often do you see Conservative politicians insulted to their faces on national telly?
More than you might think, and not just when news anchors are struggling to pronounce Jeremy Hunt’s name live on air.
The popular nickname for the Conservative Party – the Tories – comes from the Irish word for outlaw, ‘tóraidhe’.
Its use in English dates all the way back to the reign of King Charles II in the late 17th century.
At that time it was used to refer to supporters of the future King James II, a protestant, who defeated is catholic rival in succeeding to the throne.
The Irish previously used it to refer to English and Scottish settlers stealing their land.
Whiskey
One of the world’s favourite liquors, whiskey has a poetic meaning in Irish, from which it was borrowed nearly 500 years ago.
The Irish term still in use today, uisce beatha, literally means ‘water of life’.
Uisce beatha was itself a direct translation of the Latin aqua vitae, which referred to distilled alcohols.
Jazz
This is a slightly controversial one as there are various etymologies floating around.
But one popular among Irish people who jokingly claim ‘the Irish invented jazz’, is that the name for this music genre comes from the Irish word for heat, ‘teas’.
If this is the case, it’s possible the word was used to describe the energy and emotions around the music.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
MORE: England and Man Utd legend Wayne Rooney reveals he almost played for another country
MORE: Trump complains about ‘stupid leaders’ who let EU and Ireland ‘take advantage’ of US
MORE: Boy, 11, suffers punctured lung ‘after being stabbed by classmate’ at school
