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  1. brogue love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A heavy shoe of untanned leather, formerly worn in Scotland and Ireland.
  2. n. A strong oxford shoe, usually with ornamental perforations and wing tips.
  3. n. A strong dialectal accent, especially a strong Irish or Scottish accent when speaking English.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. Formerly, in Ireland, a shoe made of rawhide, with the hair outward, reaching as far as the ankle and tied by thongs.
  2. n. A similar foot-covering worn by the Scotch Highlanders, but commonly made of deer-hide, either freshly stripped off or half dried, and having holes to allow water to escape.
  3. n. A smooth piece of wood worn on the foot in the operation of washing tin, when the ore is in fine particles.
  4. n. A dialectal manner of pronunciation: especially used of the mode of pronouncing English peculiar to the Irish.
  5. n. A variant of brog.

Wiktionary

  1. v. dialect to fish for eels by disturbing the waters
  2. n. A strong dialectal accent. In Ireland it used to be a term for Irish spoken with a strong English accent, but gradually changed to mean English spoken with a strong Irish accent as English control of Ireland gradually increased and Irish waned as the standard language.
  3. n. A strong Oxford shoe, with ornamental perforations and wing tips.
  4. n. dated A heavy shoe of untanned leather.
  5. v. transitive, intransitive To speak with a brogue (accent).
  6. v. intransitive To walk.
  7. v. transitive To kick.
  8. v. transitive To punch a hole in, as with an awl.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A stout, coarse shoe; a brogan.
  2. n. A dialectic pronunciation; esp. the Irish manner of pronouncing English.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a thick and heavy shoe

Etymologies

  1. Possibly from French brouiller (Wiktionary)
  2. Irish and Scottish Gaelic bróg, from Old Irish bróc, shoe, possibly from Old Norse brōk, legging, or from Old English brōc; see breech.Probably from the brogues worn by peasants. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “Mickey's gently lifting Irish brogue is enough to call a storm .....”

    Heroes or Villains?

  • “His brogue is pretty clear (he enunicates better that Craig Ferguson) so that would be fun.”

    David Tennant gets a pilot: If anyone can save NBC, it's The Doctor, right? | EW.com

  • “Fun fact: the word brogue is derived from the Gaelic word, bróg, which means "shoe.”

    Outblush

  • “It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean, and presaged a misuse of infinitives and possessives with which he w as very familiar and which touched him nearly.”

    Freckles

  • “It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean, and presaged a misuse of infinitives and possessives with which he was very familiar and which touched him nearly.”

    Freckles

  • “His hair was short, and stuck up aggressively; his brogue was the strongest in the regiment; his blunders were innumerable, and his look of amazement at the laughter they called forth was admirably feigned, save that the twinkle of his eye induced a suspicion that he himself enjoyed the joke as well as anyone.”

    With Moore at Corunna

  • “Simon Pegg plays Scotty as Simon Pegg with a brogue, which is exactly what I wanted to see.”

    Ain't It Cool News - The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.

  • “Cousin Mary was the very type of the beautiful old lady, with her silver hair and her sweet Southern Irish voice; foreigners must be warned that this resembles what they call a "brogue" about as little as the speech of a Highland gentleman resembles the jargon of the Glasgow slums.”

    Surprised by Joy

  • “But she did not give her "brogue" the inimitable twist she had given it in the practices, and her readings lacked their usual fire and appeal.”

    Rilla of Ingleside

  • “His face relaxes: he turns quietly, and gravely takes off his hat to the tuft, addressing the insect in a brogue which is the jocular assumption of a gentleman and not the natural speech of a peasant.”

    John Bull's Other Island

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synonyms (2)

Words with the same meaning

  1. brogan
  1. shoe

hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. shoe

same context (11)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. drawl
  2. sniffle
  1. lisp
  2. intonation
  1. singsong
  2. lilt
  1. contralto
  2. dialect
  1. twang
  2. cadence
  1. accent

reverse dictionary (6)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. brog
  1. sandal
  1. brogan
  1. broguery
  1. thick
  1. Irish

tags (2)

Free-form, user-generated categorization

  1. gaelic
  1. shoe

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Comments

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  • trivet I can't think of this word without remembering my grandmother. She had long, narrow feet that were hard to fit, especially back in the twenties when she was a bright young thing. When recalling shopping for dancing shoes in her youth (size 11), "All they ever had were brogues!" Oct 23, 2008

  • john Better known as wingtips in the U.S. Oct 23, 2008

  • milosrdenstvi Isn't this also a sort of an accent? Aug 18, 2008

  • jinglebelljosie also, brogan Aug 18, 2008

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‘brogue’ has been looked up 2964 times, loved by 4 people, added to 32 lists, commented on 4 times, and has a Scrabble score of 9.