Phrase guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.
No pronunciation record was provided for this word.
adj
Deeply connected to a place, especially Ireland; indigenous.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Ireland, dated, usually
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
adj
Deeply connected to the land; rural or rustic; earthy.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: dated
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
See racy senses 2 and 3. Popularised in Ireland in the slogan of The Nation (1842–1900) — "To create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy of the soil" — adapted from a remark by Stephen Woulfe on the Irish Municipal Reform Bill. Similar earlier phrases were used by William Drennan in Letters of Orellana in 1785, and by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1831.
