booly
English edit
Alternative forms edit
Etymology edit
Irish buaile (“cattle enclosure, summer pasturage for cows”), from Old Irish bó (“cow”) or būale, probably from Latin bovile (“cattle stall”) or bubile, from Latin bos (“cow, bull, ox”) (bov-).
Pronunciation edit
Noun edit
booly (plural boolies)
- (obsolete) A company of Irish herdsmen, or a single herdsman, wandering from place to place with flocks and herds, and living on their milk, like the Tartars.
- (obsolete) A place in the mountain pastures enclosed for the shelter of cattle or their keepers.
- Synonyms: booley house, shieling
- The term booley was not confined to the mountainous districts; for in some parts of Ireland it was applied to any place where cattle were fed or milked, or which was set apart for dairy purposes.
- 1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […] (Ancient Irish Histories), Dublin: […] Society of Stationers, […] Hibernia Press, […] [b]y John Morrison, 1809, →OCLC:
- they are evermore succoured and finde releife only in these boolies, being upon the waste places
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “booly”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)