spalpeen
Americannoun
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a lad or boy.
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a rascal; scamp.
noun
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an itinerant seasonal labourer
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a rascal or layabout
Etymology
Origin of spalpeen
1770–80; < Irish spailpín seasonal hired laborer, rude person, scamp, equivalent to spailp spell, bout, turn + -ín noun suffix
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
What does a writer do when he has already won the Man Booker Prize and can make copacetic use of words like preterite, spalpeen, goitrous and phthistic?
From New York Times • Apr. 4, 2010
"The colonel is as bad as that little spalpeen, the sutler!"
From The Young Sharpshooter at Antietam by Tomlinson, Everett T. (Everett Titsworth)
It looks," said Spud O'Malley, "as if some bad little spalpeen of the skies had thrown pebbles at it when 'twas soft.
From The Finding of Haldgren by Diffin, Charles Willard
I suspict," said Dennis, as he tauntingly grinned at the helpless prisoner, "that the little spalpeen has some other papers somewhere about him.
From The Young Sharpshooter at Antietam by Tomlinson, Everett T. (Everett Titsworth)
"Faith, and I'm one of them myself," says Patsy, "and I suppose you're after takin' my place, ye spalpeen; I have a right to swat your face for you, so I have."
From Snow on the Headlight A Story of the Great Burlington Strike by Warman, Cy
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
