Urchar Bodaigh i bPoll Móna (‘A Random Shot’) and Other Irish Sayings

Abstract

This article engages with various Irish phrases and sayings such as urchar bodaigh i bpoll móna (‘a random shot’) and demonstrates how particular terms have been lexicographically described by Dineen and Ó Donaill. Irish expressions have embodied terms with multiple meanings that contribute to the complexity of various expressions and how various terms can be paired together. Lexicographers note the widespread deployment of the words bod and bodach (and a range of related terms) to spawn, in various combinations, a swathe of terminology relating to aspects of the natural world and the firmament. The disparate and versatile lexical capacity of bod and bodach and their derivatives adumbrated in botanical, icthyological, ornithological, meteorological and astronomical nomenclature is quite striking, not least because of its sexual dimensions.