Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Usury.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun archaic
Usury . - noun historical, Ireland A moneylender during the Great Famine.
- noun Ireland, slang A mean, underhanded, corrupt person. Usually applied to
politicians . - adjective Ireland
Corrupt ,underhanded .
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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'gombeen' behaviour will become unprofitable, and eventually legally prohibitive.
Irish Blogs 2009
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'gombeen' behaviour will become unprofitable, and eventually legally prohibitive.
Irish Blogs 2009
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I would really love to hear some topical radio shows about Parnell and Robert Emmet and people like that rather than the gombeen gobshites we have to hear about every day these days.
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Whatever the medics and gombeen men would have you believe cannabis, whiskey and wine are psychologically and physically addictive.
Giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, Tony Blair said: “I... 2010
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Kerry let me remind you is the former constituency of Dick Spring, former leader of the Labour Party and the current constituency of former IRA commander Martin Ferris TD, a man who was once caught red-handed shipping a cargo Libyan supplied arms and the home of gombeen Jackie Healey-Rae, a man who would make a St. Patrick's Day leprauchan blush with shame at his shameless stage Oirish paddywackery.
On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with... 2009
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For now, 26 county gombeen Freestatism is the name of the game.
Archive 2008-11-01 Johnny Guitar 2008
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For now, 26 county gombeen Freestatism is the name of the game.
We’re on the one road. Well, sort of. Johnny Guitar 2008
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There's plenty that can be said against gombeen politics - but a situation where people prioritise local needs is completely dependent on its existence.
Archive 2007-11-01 2007
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And it was scarcely to be supposed the poet of the Roisín Dubh had in mind the coming of a shoneen talking-house, a gombeen legislature scrounged and cadged for by whiskey-swilling fixers in the imperial Parliament across the sea.
At Swim, Two Boys Jamie O’Neill 2002
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And it was scarcely to be supposed the poet of the Roisín Dubh had in mind the coming of a shoneen talking-house, a gombeen legislature scrounged and cadged for by whiskey-swilling fixers in the imperial Parliament across the sea.
At Swim, Two Boys Jamie O’Neill 2002
brtom commented on the word gombeen
The gombeen woman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba.
Joyce, Ulysses, 9
January 6, 2007
bort commented on the word gombeen
I had a teacher who used this a lot
January 4, 2008
jennarenn commented on the word gombeen
I think it's a teacher trick to choose one or two vocab words and beat them to death during the year. I had a geometry teacher who was particularly fond of superfluous. Dawdle is my personal mission for the 07/08 school year.
January 4, 2008
reesetee commented on the word gombeen
I had a teacher who always threatened to "have our heads" when we misbehaved. I used to fancy them all lined up, shrunken to fist size, along the front edge of her desk.
January 4, 2008
bilby commented on the word gombeen
Why am I beginning to think of a list of teacher words? It's one of the those Word Reality = List Potentiality afflictions. I have it bad :-(
January 4, 2008
reesetee commented on the word gombeen
Get jennarenn to help you. She's an expert. :-)
January 4, 2008
jennarenn commented on the word gombeen
Well, the only thing a teacher really needs to do is shoot you is the LOOK OF DEATH. Collecting the heads could get her classroom all messy.
January 4, 2008
reesetee commented on the word gombeen
She liked to give us the impression that she wouldn't have minded the mess. Chalk it up (sorry) to Catholic school. ;-)
January 4, 2008
jennarenn commented on the word gombeen
I've heard that nuns do a really great LOOK OF DEATH. Never had the good fortune to be Catholic, so I missed all the "fun".
January 4, 2008
reesetee commented on the word gombeen
Oh, they do indeed. And it comes with a nicely wrapped package of Burn in Hell, too. Highly effective. :-)
January 4, 2008
michaelt42 commented on the word gombeen
I give another quotation from "Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81," in particular for the atmosphere generated by the words of Bernard Becker:
"From the papers the figure turned to a heap as of bank-notes, and there was in the air the chink of money. For the name of this grisly and terribly real spectre is _gombeen_; which, in the Irish tongue, signifies usury.
May 21, 2012
Gammerstang commented on the word gombeen
(noun) - (1) A usurer; a profiteer; the "big man" of the village; also gombeen-man. --Michael Traynor's English Dialect of Donegal, 1953 (2) Usury; adapted from modern Irish gaimbín; a derivative of Old Celtic kmbion. Gombeenism, the practice of borrowing or lending at usury. --Sir James Murray's New English Dictionary, 1901
January 27, 2018