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Yvonne Lavelle

NÁ SCOITEAR, a road sign we see in Ireland, which means do not pass, when I was a kid my granny used to say, you little scoitear ya, if we were being a bit bold, "he is a right little scoitear", he is a right little shit. Ná scoitear does mean do not pass, but originally it meant pass bodily fluids. Next time you see it, it literally means DO NOT SHIT. New age Gaeilge, makes me laugh anyway.

@Yvonne 😂 also sounds very like the "scutters"

@Yvonne Nice story, but... scoitear is from the verb scoith, which has nothing in the slightest to do with shit or any kind of bodily fluids. teanglann.ie/en/fgb/scoith. Skitter, as in 'ya wee skitter' does have to do with bodily fluids, but its origins are via middle English to the Old Norse skitr, meaning dung.

www.teanglann.ieFoclóir Gaeilge–Béarla (Ó Dónaill): scoithEverything about 'scoith' in the Ó Dónaill Irish-English Dictionary

@eoinmac and origiin of language and its uses is not definitive, if you know your bealoideas you will know that any number of assumptions can be made of exact origins,but language is not an exact science the joy of language is in the vernacular, the Ó Donaill bible is one interpretaion of origin and the same is true of Irish placenames and surnames. So next time you want to throw google at someone , maybe stop and just enjoy the story ,because the joy of language is in the stories.

@Yvonne Google ain't got nothing to do with it! And I said the story was nice. BUT if you're just making shit up you should be clearer about it. Language origins are not always definitive, but that doesn't mean anything goes. (You are welcome to send me any example of the verb scoith from Irish through the ages being used in connection with bodily fluids if you can find one; I can't.)

@eoinmac ceart go leor, táim ag lig mo scith , an Satharn atá ann agus ta tuitseach orm, as seo amach ni bheidh focal asam...

@Yvonne Bain sult as deireadh na seachtaine!

@Yvonne Here, you’ll like this: if we push back beyond Old Norse, beyond Proto-Germanic we can take shit/skitter back to the Proto-Indo-European root *skei-, ‘to cut, split’, the idea being that bodily waste is separated or cut off from the body. And of course ‘cut off, lop, sever’ is the first and most basic meaning of the modern Irish term scoith. Now, Proto-Indo-European is more of a concept than an actual thing, but it’s still a nice connection. One up to you.

@Yvonne thanks for following me, I have been laughing at this post for the entire morning

@Yvonne this was my father's go-to 'term of endearment' for me.