run - 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.
run, rin
1 vb (also run off vb phr) To distill liquor (poteen in Ulster, illicit whiskey in the U.S.); in the U.S. also to make sorghum, syrup, etc. Hence n A single cycle of distilled liquor (or the liquor produced in this cycle), a production of sorghum, syrup, etc. [oed run vb 7(2); snd rin 7(2) ‘to draw (liquor), to distill (whisky)’ 1721→]
Ulst.:
1895 MacManus Leadin’ Road 182 The inmates, all unconscious of the impending danger, are commemmorating the successful brewing of the last ‘run’ of mountain dew. Ibid. 198 Tell me where’s the poteen ye run last night.
1978 McGuffin Praise of Poteen 60 The first run would come out and be caught in half of a large plastic fruit container. We normally always drank the singlings rather than give it a second run. This meant that although we got drunk we got a shocking hangover because the fusel oil hadn’t been eliminated.
1990 Todd Words Apart 139 = to distill poteen: ‘Was that poteen well run?’
U.S.:
1800 Osborn Diary (1 Jan) I began again for to run my still but I am not very fit for hard Leabour.
1939 Hall Coll We used fifty pounds of sugar to a bushel of meal and ran it off a dozen times or so.
1978 Montgomery White Pine Coll I-3 A lot of areas still have a lot [of moonshine] being passed between individuals who know someone who is still running a still and still running it off.
2 n A small stream, creek. [oed run n1 II.9 ‘a small stream, brook, rivulet, or watercourse’ chiefly U.S. and northern dialect; dost rin n 1 ‘the overflow from an enclosed body of water; a stream having its source in such an overflow; a channel to carry away such a flow’ 1581→; snd rin n 1; dare run n 1a ‘a small stream’ scattered but chiefly western Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland]
Ulst.:
c1910 Byers Glossary = a small stream: ‘Severals told me about it’.
U.S.:
[1816 Pickering American Vocabulary 167 This is sometimes conversation; but not in writing. The English dictionaries do not give this sense of the word.]
1930 Shoemaker 1300 Penn Words 50 = a mountain torrent.
1960 Hall Smoky Mt Folks 59 = a marshy place or small stream, as in Tight Run, near Ravensford.
1968 Powell NC Gazetteer 427 [Occasionally used for small watercourses]: Rough Run (Jackson Co, flowing into West Fork Tuckasegee River).
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)
