![]() Someone who has notions or is getting notions has an inflated sense of their own importance, status, or charm. Of the two Irish senses, this is the only one I use. Notions has another sense in Irish English, that of pretension or affectation. unless of course you get a notion of her as well!’ ‘It’s a hard bind when a dacent woman has a notion of you and does you a good turn. Share cites Ó Faoláin’s story as an example, along with this one from Michael ‘Gossie’ Browne in Mary Ryan et al. have a notion of, to be sexually attracted to’.īernard Share’s invaluable Slanguage defines notions as ‘sexual inclinations’ and adds the same phrase have a notion of, ‘be amorously attracted to’. The Chambers Dictionary of Slang has an entry for the Irish usage, defining it as ‘amorous inclinations, usu. In Ireland, notion(s) can have very particular connotations of sexual or flirtatious behaviour. While the idea of affection or attraction here is evident, the sexual or amorous element doesn’t appear to be necessarily central, or even necessary. Had a strang notion o’ the lass mysel’ (1789) a Yankee may have a kinder sneakin’ notion arter her (1864) This soldier took a notion to my granny (1985). one of a romantic or sexual nature.Īll its examples are in the singular, e.g. The OED, however, includes one sense that comes close:īrit. For the most part they echo Georgie’s pocket dictionary: opinion, idea, belief, conception, whim, etc. Most of the major dictionaries are of little use in explaining the notions Sister Eustasia warned Jenny about. I’m not sure what Ó Faoláin’s intent was in making Dick unaware of it: maybe the usage was not common in Cork at that time, maybe it’s for readers’ benefit, or maybe Dick’s time in England means he’s not fully up to speed with some of the Irish vernacular.Īnyway, about those notions. ‘To steal’ is one of several meanings of the word feck in Ireland. If you can, what was your word, feck half-a-crown, you may come.’ ‘If we subscribe seventeen and sixpence, do you think you can contribute half-a-crown?’ The oldest boy, Dick, organises the money and says to Gong Gong: Clearly a notion was very sexy.Ī plan is hatched: the boys will pay a local woman of notorious reputation to explain to them or show them her notion or notions, whatever that might entail. The two girls stared at one another with cow’s eyes, blushed scarlet and fled from the shop shrieking with laughter. ![]() ‘Pardon me ladies, but do you by any chance happen to have notions?’ She suggests asking ‘two giggling girls’ who are eating toffee nearby, and Georgie does so with consummate politeness: The boys turn for help to Mrs Coffey, in whose sweetshop they hang about. ‘An ingenious contrivance’? ‘An imperfect conception (U.S.)’? ‘Small wares’? It did not make sense. The three gazed at one another, and began at once to discuss all the possible sexy meanings of notions. ‘Ould Sister Eustasia,’ he fizzled, ‘made her go out in the yard and wash herself under the tap, she said they didn’t want any girls in their school who had notions.’ Sprayed them with the news that his sister Jenny had been thrown out of class that morning in Saint Monica’s for turning up with a red ribbon in her hair, a mother-of-pearl brooch at her neck and smelling of scent. One day the youngest, Tommy, nicknamed Gong Gong for his ‘wild bursts of talk like a fire alarm’, The boys read comics from England,* we’re told, ‘which was where they got all those swanky words like Wham, Ouch, Yaroosh, Ooof and Jolly Well.’ Educated by priests and nuns, they are at a loss to understand some of the words they hear used in relation to adult and sexual behaviour. It’s a humorous coming-of-age tale of a group of teenage boys in Cork city, containing several explicit references to language. ‘The Talking Trees’ by Seán Ó Faoláin is the opening story in the anthology Body and Soul: Irish Short Stories of Sexual Love, edited by David Marcus and published by Poolbeg Press in 1979.
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