poke - 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.

poke n A small paper container, a bag or sack; a pouch or small bundle; in Ulster also a paper cone for sweets. [< Middle English poke, probably < Norman French poke, poque, of Germanic origin, akin to Old English pokka ‘bag, pocket’, but cf Old Norse poki ‘a bag’; oed poke n 1 ‘a bag; a small sack’ 1300→, now chiefly dialect; dost poke n 1 ‘a bag or small sack’ 1328→; dare poke n1 1a ‘a bag or sack, especially a small one; now usually a paper bag’ chiefly Midland, especially Appalachians; lausc Midland]

Ulst.:

1753 Scotch Poems 375 He munts the stage, and ’neath his cloak, / He brought a pig stow’d in a poke.

1834 Beggs Minstrel’s Offering 7 An’ now the poke an’ the staff I maun tak’ / An’ wander awa’, an awmous to beg.

1880 Patterson Antrim/Down Glossary 79 = a bag.

1889 Hart Derryreel 86-87 Wan day the wandering craythur of a man that was earning his living by sthreeling about the country, with his pail and pokes, and begging, came limping up to the doore of the house.

1953 Traynor Donegal Glossary 215 = a bag, sack; a wallet, pocket; a small paper bag for sweets, tea, etc.

1997 Share Slanguage 219 = bag, sack, wallet, pocket

1998 Daly Pilgrim Journey 32-33 Greedy appetite was whetted when we watched Miss McKillen weigh a handful of sweets on her weighing machine, adding a couple of extra sweets for good measure, then deftly fold a piece of yesterday’s newspaper into a cone-shaped packet or ‘poke’ and hand it over in exchange for the coin.

U.S.:

1816 Pickering American Vocabulary 152 = a bag. I have heard this old word used by some persons here in the compound term cream-poke; that is, a small bag, through which cream is strained.

1860 (in 1938 Taliaferro Carolina Humor 10) He has a ‘poke’ on his back, full of dried beef and venison, and corn bread.

1895 Edson and Fairchild Tenn Mts 373 He had a poke of peanuts.

1930 Shoemaker 1300 Penn Words 46 = a sack or bag.

1949 Kurath Word Geog East US 56 Poke is current, often by the side of bag or sack, in a large area extending from central Pennsylvania westward, and southward to the Carolinas. In Virginia the Blue Ridge forms the eastern boundary of the poke area, in North Carolina the Yadkin [River].

1986 Ogle Lucinda 56 [At Christmas] pokes were filled with one apple, orange, maybe a banana and two sticks of candy and some grocer mixed kind of candy.

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Purchase From Ulster to America

From Ulster to AmericaThe 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)

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A new edition of Michael Montgomery’s From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English recounts the lasting impact that at least 150,000 settlers from Ulster in the 18th century made on the development of the English language of the United States. This new edition published by the Ulster-Scots Language Society documents over 500 ‘shared’ vocabulary items which are authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. A searchable online version of this dictionary is now also available here.

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