thole - 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.
thole vb To endure patiently, suffer. [oed thole vb 2 < Old English þolian ‘to suffer, hold out, endure’ (Sweet), now northern dialect or archaic; snd thole vb ‘to suffer, undergo (pain, grief, vexation, etc.), to be subjected to or afflicted with, to have to bear or endure’ 1718→]
Ulst.:
1801 Hafiz Winter Sketch The cautious conie lea’s her hole / To crap faint Nature’s scanty dole / On bank or brae, / Doom’d hunger hard, puir beast! to thole / Now mony a day.
1831 McWilliams Songs 10 Would the great condescend but a day or an hour, / To thole the privations the poor must endure, / They surely would use every means in their power, / To Grant some relief to the Irish shore.
1861 Hume Rabbin’s Ollminick 10 These bad times is tarrible hard for the poor t’ thole.
1891 Simmons Armagh Words and Phrases 19 = to suffer or endure anything painful.
1910 Joyce English in Ireland 341 = to endure, to bear: ‘I had to thole hardship and want while you were away’.
c1912 Byers Characteristics of Ulsterman 7 Sometimes the Ulsterman’s bluntness of speech, his dislike of shams, his inability to ‘thole’ anyone who indulges in foolish and inappropriate remarks, and, especially, his disgust in his own judgment if he fails in ‘sizing out’ anyone, make him appear the reverse of pleasing to those who do not understand him.
1921 Doyle Ulster Childhood 15 When, for instance, he read in [Burns’] ‘The Twa Dogs’ of the ‘poor tenant bodies, scant o’ cash, How they maun thole a factor’s snash’, he paused to explain that a factor was, with us, a land-agent … But I was rapt in the discovery that ‘thole’ and ‘snash’ were real words, and that I might use them in the future without shame-facedness.
1923 Lutton Montiaghisms 43 = to abstain from food and drink, to endure.
1935 Megaw Carragloon 15 So young Robert was gradually becoming an old Robert with little to say and much to thole.
1942 Bangor Words 79 = bear, suffer: ‘I can’t thole it any longer’.
1991 O’Kane You Don’t Say 145 = to endure, to put up with: ‘He’s hard to thole when he starts boasting about his new car’.
2014 Fenton Hamely Tongue 250 = (1) endure pain: ‘Ye may jaist thole tae it’s better’; (2) stand: ‘Boys but that boy’s ill tae thole’; (3) bear: ‘She cannae thole anither boady gettin a poun’.
U.S.:
1916 Smith Cape Cod Notes 264 Since a thole-pin, unlike a metal row-lock, rarely breaks or groans, the figure indicates a survival of the root meaning of ‘thole’, ‘to suffer’.
1940 Haun Hawk’s Done 163 I thought I couldn’t thole it when Ad and Linus first started selling off my stuff.
