Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A person who lives in or frequents bogs.
- noun Offensive Slang Used as a disparaging term for a person of Irish birth or ancestry.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who trots over bogs, or lives among bogs; especially, a contemptuous appellation given to the Irish peasantry, probably from the skill shown by many of them in crossing the extensive bogs of the country by leaping from tussock to tussock, where a stranger would find no footing, and from the frequent use they make of this skill to escape from the soldiery, the police, etc.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun One who lives in a boggy country; -- applied in derision to the lowest class of Irish.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun One who lives in a
boggy country; applied in derision to the lowest class ofIrish .
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Hey, Kelly: was your great-grandpappy called a bogtrotter back in the day?
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Barely ninety minutes after being given the boot by that bogtrotter sergeant, she was sipping coffee in the RTE studios in Donnybrook, yakking to Gaffney while some other guy did sound checks on her mike.
The Priest Gerard O’Donovan 2011
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Yup bobby I’m a real live bogtrotter ‘though my home is in Denmark these days.
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April 14th, 2006 at 5:37 pm mfi: ‘OK I’m only a benighted bogtrotter’
Firedoglake » Iran: Calculated Madness and Common Sense 2006
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"Tory" was at this time the name for a native Irish outlaw or "bogtrotter," and in fastening it on the loyalist adherents of James's cause the
History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 John Richard Green 1860
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"Go to the devil, you Irish bogtrotter!" was the reply.
The Gold Hunters' Adventures Or, Life in Australia William Henry Thomes 1859
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'I contend for it that all our civilisation is higher, and that class for class we are in a more advanced culture than the English; that your chawbacon is not as intelligent a being as our bogtrotter; that your petty shopkeeper is inferior to ours; that throughout our middle classes there is not only a higher morality but a higher refinement than with you.'
Lord Kilgobbin Charles James Lever 1839
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A CONCEITED coxcomb, with a very patronizing air, called out to an Irish laborer, "Here, you bogtrotter, come and tell me the greatest lie you can, and I'll treat you to a jug of whiskey-punch."
The Jest Book The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings Mark Lemon 1839
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Billy boy, you bloody bogtrotter (oh dear now I'M a racist!) this is simply a marytr play to get a weird kind of sympathy from other the poo 'oppr'ss white chillin's.
Think Progress Amanda Terkel 2010
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PS As a bogtrotter from Cavan, I really wish you would slip into a coma and die within the next week ...
Army Rumour Service 2009
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