Word.ws English Dictionary

Paddyism

Paddyism noun: the quality of being stereotypically Irish.

Noun

Paddyism (countable and uncountable, plural Paddyisms)

  1. (colloquial, derogatory, uncountable) The quality of being stereotypically Irish.
    • Faith and begorrah it’s that time of year again. Time, that is, for the kind of “virulent eruptions of Paddyism” that, in the words of Ireland’s greatest newspaper columnist, is another form of “the claptrap that has made fortunes for cute professional Irishmen in America.” Yes it’s St Patrick’s...2010 March 17, Alex Massie, “The Blarney Festival Arrives Again”, in The Spectator
    • He referred to the late Fine Gael TD and constitutional expert John Kelly. He said Mr Kelly, “described this constant tendency to look at what is happening in the UK, of emulating the UK and of measuring ourselves against the UK as malignant ‘Paddyism’ and I agree”.2014 November 17, Marie O'Halloran, “Malignant Paddyism to compare Ireland to UK, says Willie O’Dea”, in The Irish Times
  2. (colloquial, countable) A Hibernianism.
    • Leaving aside the Paddyisms we put upon ourselves in order to sell aran jumpers and claddagh rings to Yanks, how do we define ourselves in this country? What makes a person Irish? What qualifies as “Irishness”?2012 March 24, Alan Keane, “Irishness? What the feck is that?”, in Keane Observer (blog), archived from the original on 01 Feb 2024

Forms of Paddyism

pluralPaddyisms

Origin of Paddyism

From Paddy (“Irishman”) + -ism.

Questions about Paddyism

What does Paddyism mean?
Paddyism means the quality of being stereotypically Irish.
What part of speech is Paddyism?
Paddyism is a noun.
What is the plural of Paddyism?
The plural of Paddyism is Paddyisms.

Words near Paddyism in the dictionary

  1. paddyfield
  2. paddyfield warbler
  3. paddyfield warblers
  4. paddyfields
  5. paddyfields crab
  6. Paddyism
  7. Paddyisms
  8. paddyland
  9. paddylands
  10. paddymelon
  11. paddymelons

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Paddyism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Paddyism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paddyism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.