{"id":225,"date":"2017-05-01T21:31:50","date_gmt":"2017-05-02T01:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theotherplace.xyz\/?p=225"},"modified":"2017-05-01T21:32:46","modified_gmt":"2017-05-02T01:32:46","slug":"gaelics-last-gasp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/?p=225","title":{"rendered":"Gaelic’s Last Gasp"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Wiktonary.org:<\/a><\/p>\n

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amad\u00e1n<\/strong>\u00a0m<\/abbr><\/span> (geniti<\/span>ve singular<\/i> amad\u00e1in<\/a><\/b>, nominative plural<\/i> amad\u00e1in<\/a><\/b>)<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. (<\/span>pejorative<\/a><\/span>)<\/span> fool<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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    A couple of times I heard my dad use the word “amadan”. \u00a0 He used it in a story (of which I remember no details) describing how his father (or maybe grandfather) had used it as an insult. He pronounced it “omadon”. \u00a0 Omadon sounded like a large, lumbering stupid, plant eating dinosaur, so I though he was just misremembering a\u00a0dinosaur name to refer to someone who wasn’t too bright.<\/p>\n

    It turns out that Amadan is the Irish word for fool. \u00a0I don’t think dad even recognized it as a real word. \u00a0He certainly didn’t remember it as the last word of the Irish language in our family’s collective memory.<\/p>\n

    Except…<\/p>\n

    “Amadan” may not have been the only Irish word in the Bradshaw family lexicon. \u00a0There is one other word that I hesitate to mention. \u00a0My siblings and some of my cousins (I’m looking at you Deb Bryant) will remember it.<\/p>\n

    Bondoon<\/strong><\/em><\/span>.<\/h1>\n

    There \u00a0– I said it. \u00a0Our family’s word for backside, rump, derriere, buttocks. \u00a0Usually used as a warning : \u00a0“I’m going to warm your Bondoon” or \u00a0“If you’re not careful you’ll fall right on your Bondoon”. \u00a0I remember using it at school, and getting laughed at. \u00a0No one else had heard the word. \u00a0 There may have been a few Cassidys or Dwyers in town who knew the word, but as far as we knew it was just our family’s nonsense word for buttocks.<\/p>\n

    Then, one day while wasting time on the internet, I found: \u00a0THIS LINK<\/a>. \u00a0It’s the only reference I have found to the word. \u00a0In particular, there’s a comment:<\/p>\n

    \n

    “Like others, I came upon this thread after searching for the origin of “bondoon”. My family has been using this word as slang for the butt since my earliest memory. My mother said it started with my great-grandmother who emigrated from Tipperary, Ireland in the 1880’s. So I thought that was interesting because then it dates back a lot further than we thought!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

    \n

    I have a completely unproven theory that this is also a fragment of Irish. About ten years ago, \u00a0I briefly took an Irish language class. \u00a0The teacher was a native speaker from the Connemara. \u00a0 He taught us the Irish word for “bottom” which was “Thoin”, pronounced “toon” \u00a0which among other things can refer to a person’s behind. \u00a0It’s not too much of a stretch to theorize that it came to be pronounced “doon”. \u00a0 No idea where\u00a0the “Bon” part came from. \u00a0If there are any linguistic anthropologists out there who have a lead, I’d love to hear it.<\/p>\n

    So that’s all there is to this post. \u00a0People forget words, even entire languages. They stop using words because they get laughed at. \u00a0A word is spoken for the last time and no one marks the occasion.<\/p>\n

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     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    From Wiktonary.org: amad\u00e1n\u00a0m (genitive singular amad\u00e1in, nominative plural amad\u00e1in) (pejorative) fool A couple of times I heard my dad use the word “amadan”. \u00a0 He used it in a story (of which I remember no details) describing how his father (or maybe grandfather) had used it as an insult. He pronounced it “omadon”. \u00a0 Omadon … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “Gaelic’s Last Gasp”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theotherplace.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}