seannachie

English

Etymology

From Irish seanchaí and Scottish Gaelic seanchaidh.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃænəxi/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

Noun

seannachie (plural seannachies)

1. (Highland, Scotland) A bard among the Highlanders of Scotland, who preserved and repeated the traditions of the tribes.
   • 1816, Sir Walter Scott, The Antiquary, Oxford University Press, published 2002, page 65:

     Take a glass of wine, Sir Arthur, and drink down that bead-roll of unbaptized jargon, that would choke the devil - why, that last fellow has the only intelligible name you have repeated - they are all of the tribe of Macfungus - mushroom monarchs every one of them; sprung up from the fumes of conceit, folly, and falsehood, fermenting in the brains of some mad Highland seannachie.

2. A genealogist.

Alternative forms

• seannachy
• senachy
• sennachie

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 The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.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 “seannachie”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)