culchie

English

Etymology

Possibly from Kiltimagh, a town in County Mayo, Ireland, or from Irish coillte (“woods”). Possibly a corruption of the shortening of agricultural to culch +‎ -ie.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃi/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

culchie (plural culchies)

1. (Ireland, slang, derogatory) An unsophisticated rural person; a rustic or provincial.

   Synonyms: bogtrotter, bogger, redneck; see also Thesaurus:country bumpkin

   • 1987, Roddy Doyle, The Commitments, Dublin: King Farouk:

     Only culchies shop in Clery's but, said Billy.

   • 1991, Management Centre Europe, Industrial relations Europe‎^[1], volume 19, number 264:

     For most of his quarter-century in Ireland's parliament, he was regarded as the archetypal "culchie", Dublin slang for an unpolished, reactionary rural type.

   • 2005, Raymond Hickey, Dublin English: evolution and change, John Benjamins Publishing Company:

     A dismissive attitude towards rural accents was all too prevalent: accents outside Dublin being described as 'culchie, bogger, mucker' accents.

   • 2013, Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, Faber & Faber, published 2014, page 35:

     And I'm from some place so much littler than this. That redneck culchie.

   • 2018, Sally Rooney, “Six Months Later (July 2013)”, in Normal People:

     Am I really? he said. I'm not offended but honestly, I thought I was kind of cool.
     You're such a culchie, though.

   • 2021, Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation‎^[2], Random House, →ISBN:

     She was from a town considered even more small-time and hokey than my own by the confident Dublin people, who considered everyone from outside their own hopelessly provincial suburbs to be ‘culchies’, farmers, inbred and unsophisticated.

See also

• jackeen
• spalpeen