deil - From Ulster to America
Source: From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English
Author: Michael Montgomery
Comments: From Ulster to America recounts the lasting impact eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster have made on the development of the English language of the United States. The book documents over 500 vocabulary items contributed to American English by these ‘Scotch-Irish’ settlers. Each ‘shared’ term with its meaning is authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. This searchable online version of his book takes its text from the dictionary part of the second edition published by the Ullans Press in 2017.
deil, deel n The Devil. [Scottish form of devil]
Ulst.:
1753 Scotch Poems 370 But a fause critick’s like the deel, / Slips, fau’ts, and failings, please them weel.
c1800 Thomson (in 1992 Scott and Robinson Samuel Thomson 1) Some say thou’art sib kin to the sow, / But sibber to the deil, I trow.
1880 Patterson Antrim/Down Glossary 29 ‘The deil couldn’t do it unless he was drunk’ (said of something very difficult).
1920 McCallin Fireside Tales 224 They sorted bravely thegither, consitherin’ they were both as crabbit as the deil.
1953 Traynor Donegal Glossary 78 deil, deel.
U.S.:
1930 Shoemaker 1300 Penn Words 17 deil’s own buckie = one of the devil’s kind.
Purchase From Ulster to America
The second, revised edition of Michael Montgomery’s From Ulster to America is now available here:
From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English (Europe)
From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English (North America)