Fluther’s Theses Frank McNally on the curious evolution of a drunken adjective – The Irish Times

I was wondering here recently (Diary, September 28th) about the origins of the word fluthered, one of Irelands countless euphemisms for drunk.

Even Terry Dolans A Dictionary of Hiberno-English had declared it of origin unknown, although Dolan cross-referenced Sean OCaseys Fluther Good as a person who might be of interest to inquiries.

That seemed to me a stretch since, unlike Fluther, the term meaning drunk is always in the past tense. For all we knew, OCaseys present-tense protagonist might instead have been a musician, or descended from one, and so etymologically related to Phil the Fluther, of Percy French fame.

But as I have since learned, fluthered has just this year made it into another dictionary, the ultimate authority on these matters. On a proud day last June, it took its place alongside the other f-words in the online Oxford English Dictionary, labelled Irish-English, colloquial.

Of the examples cited by the OED, the earliest was from James Joyce, via a 1927 extract from the Work in Progress that became Finnegans Wake. In a rare instance of simple English in that text, Joyce referred to somebody falling fluthered.

The most recent example, by contrast, was from The Irish Times in 2017 quoting a very different book Oh My God, What a Complete Aisling on this truism of life in Ireland: Thats the problem with early weddings everyone is fluthered by teatime.

As to fluthereds origins, the OED ventured it was probably a variant of an earlier term. Step forward peloothered, a word now rare, although it turns out that, inevitably, James Joyce used that too.

There he is in Dubliners (1914), from a story in which an alcoholic is retrieving details of an embarrassing incident and asks what happened. It happened that you were peloothered, Tom, somebody explains. The dictionary also cites a 1942 headline from the Economist magazine: Peloothered on words. The Irish love playing with language.

But there is no Irish Times citation in this case, and with good reason, because for 151 years, according to our archive, the paper was conspicuously silent about peloothered. Then the term finally staggered into the database for the first (and until now only) time, in 2010. And that was also thanks to Joyce, and a feature on Irish words in the OED.

Perhaps the lack of peloothering in our pages during Joyces time reflects the predominance of sober Protestants in editorial roles back then. One the other hand, the many accounts of Bertie Smyllies famous editorship suggests sobriety was the exception rather than norm.

And here is Smyllies star columnist, Myles na gCopaleen, a man who had extensively researched the condition, responding to a 1942 readers query about the meaning of the term moppy with a list of synonyms:

drunk; jarred; fluthered, canned; rotten; plasthered; elephants; fluthery-eyed; spiflicated; screwed; tight; mouldy; maggoty; full to the brim; footless; blind; spaychless; blotto; scattered; merry; well on; shook; inebriated; tanked up; oiled; well-oiled; cock-eyed; cross-eyed; crooked; boozed; muzzy; sozzled; bat-eyed; pie-eyed; having quantum sufficio; and under the influence of intoxicating liquor.

No peloothered there either. Indeed, strange to say, the only Irish newspaper columnist who ever seems to have featured the term was Hugh Leonard in his long-running Sunday Independent slot. Leonard used it often, including even in the context of a London West End play, Noel Cowards Fallen Angels, wherein the wives get peloothered.

He once wondered if the word derived from yet another synonym for drunk, polluted. But it seems not. The OED links both fluthered and peloothered to an older term, blootered, which in various spellings it can trace back to 1820.

That was originally from the North of England, it says, but is now chiefly Scottish and Irish (northern). And sure enough, printed instances of blooter include a 1983 Ulster phrase book, where its spelt as bluther. Speaking of Protestantism, luther seems to be the only common element in all cases. The opening consonant is the flexible bit.

But getting back to fluthered, if the Oxford English Dictionary is correct, the word has made a similar transition to the word formerly known as crack. That too started out in the north of England and Scotland before migrating westward, applying an Irish passport, and taking up permanent residency here.

The c-words Irish spelling is now also recognised in the OED. But the completeness of its reinvention was confirmed by a minor controversy during the England v India cricket test this summer. That involved the batsman Johnny Bairstow, who despite being an English northern, according to the London Times, downplayed the row by saying it was only a bit of craic.

See the original post here:

Fluther's Theses Frank McNally on the curious evolution of a drunken adjective - The Irish Times