squireen
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]From squire + anglicized form of Irish -ín, diminutive suffix.
Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
[edit]squireen (plural squireens)
- (originally Ireland) A minor squire; a small landowner.
- 1917, William Francis Thomas Butler, Confiscation in Irish history, page 248:
- Probably no other country could produce such a degraded type as the squireen or buckeen, the drunken, gambling, profligate descendant of the Cromwellian or Williamite settler.
- 1983, Prys Morgan, “From a Death to a View”, in The Invention of Tradition:
- About 1730 the poet and squireen Huw Hughes wrote to the great scholar Lewis Morris that all the defenders of the old language had gone to sleep.
- 1990, Roy Porter, English Society in the 18th Century, Penguin, published 1991, page 234:
- By blending entertainment and instruction, the Spectator taught ease and affability to squireens and tradesmen with time on their hands, money in their pockets but little breeding.