English edit

Etymology edit

Possibly from Kiltimagh, a town in County Mayo, Ireland, or from Irish coillte (woods). Possibly a corruption of the shortening of agricultural to culch by adding a 'y' sound.

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /ˈkʌlt͡ʃi/
  • (file)

Noun edit

culchie (plural culchies)

  1. (Ireland, slang, derogatory) An unsophisticated rural person; a rustic or provincial.
    • 1987, Roddy Doyle, The Commitments, Dublin: King Farouk:
      Only culchies shop in Clery's but, said Billy.
    • 1991, Management Centre Europe, Industrial relations Europe[1], volume 19, number 264:
      For most of his quarter-century in Ireland's parliament, he was regarded as the archetypal "culchie", Dublin slang for an unpolished, reactionary rural type.
    • 2005, Raymond Hickey, Dublin English: evolution and change, John Benjamins Publishing Company:
      A dismissive attitude towards rural accents was all too prevalent: accents outside Dublin being described as 'culchie, bogger, mucker' accents.
    • 2013, Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, Faber & Faber, published 2014, page 35:
      And I'm from some place so much littler than this. That redneck culchie.
    • 2021, Megan Nolan, Acts of Desperation[2], Random House, →ISBN:
      She was from a town considered even more small-time and hokey than my own by the confident Dublin people, who considered everyone from outside their own hopelessly provincial suburbs to be ‘culchies’, farmers, inbred and unsophisticated.

See also edit