squireen

English

Etymology

From squire + Anglicized form of Irish -ín, diminutive suffix.

Pronunciation
  • (UK) IPA(key): /skwaɪəˈɹiːn/
  • (US) enPR: skwī-rēnʹ, IPA(key): /skwaɪˈɹiːn/

Noun

squireen (plural squireens)

  1. (originally Ireland) A minor squire; a small landowner.
    • 1917, William Francis Thomas Butler, Confiscation in Irish history, p.248
      Probably no other country could produce such a degraded type as the squireen or buckeen, the drunken, gambling, profligate descendant of the Cromwellian or Williamite settler.
    • 1983, Prys Morgan, "From a Death to a View", in The Invention of Tradition
      About 1730 the poet and squireen Huw Hughes wrote to the great scholar Lewis Morris that all the defenders of the old language had gone to sleep.
    • 1990, Roy Porter, English Society in the 18th Century, Penguin 1991, p. 234:
      By blending entertainment and instruction, the Spectator taught ease and affability to squireens and tradesmen with time on their hands, money in their pockets but little breeding.

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