Thank the Irish: 18 everyday words we inherited from them

Source: accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog

A belated St Patrick’s Day to everybody!

While St Patrick’s Day may be the best-known Irish import into everyday American life, the Gaelic Irish language has actually had more of an impact that you’d think. Thanks to English’s constant desire to steal words from other languages and assimilate them into itself, there are quite a few common words that come from the emerald isle.

For example, “whisky” (or “whiskey”) comes from the Irish uisge beatha, meaning “the water of life”. “Galore”, meaning an abundance of, comes from gu leor, meaning “enough”. The word “slogan” also comes from Irish: sluaghghairm, a combination of sluagh (“army”) and ghairm (“shout”).

For 15 more common words derived from the Irish language, check out the full blog post here.