Word.ws English Dictionary

racy of the soil

racy of the soil adjective: deeply connected to a place, especially Ireland; indigenous.

Adjective

racy of the soil (comparative more racy of the soil, superlative most racy of the soil)

  1. (Ireland, dated, usually) Deeply connected to a place, especially Ireland; indigenous.
    • We have got such foreign and fantastic field sports as lawn-tennis, polo, croquet, cricket, and the like—very excellent, I believe, and health-giving exercises in their way, still not racy of the soil, but rather alien, on the contrary, to it, as are, indeed, for the most part the men and women who...1884 December 24, Thomas Croke, “To Mr Michael Cusack, Honorary Secretary of the Gaelic Athletic Association”, in The Freeman’s Journal
    • RTÉ pundit Joe Brolly echoed this concern from his racy-of-the soil redoubt in the weekend’s Mail on Sunday.2014 April 19, Seán Moran, “Five-ish things the GAA can learn from the Sky television deal”, in The Irish Times
  2. (dated) Deeply connected to the land; rural or rustic; earthy.
    • In the hedge: ... purple loose-strife. (That our young maid's long purples call and literal shepherds give a grosser name. So racy of the soil!)1924 Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not (Parade's End, Part 1) VI
    • Like the Church, the farmers exerted an unquestionable influence for the first 50 years of the State's existence. ... Just as to be truly Irish you had to be Catholic, you also had to be racy of the soil.2003 January 7, Fintan O'Toole, “Farm demo is simply anti-change”, in The Irish Times

Forms of racy of the soil

comparativemore racy of the soil
superlativemost racy of the soil
alternative formracy of one's soil

Origin of racy of the soil

See racy senses 2 and 3. Popularised in Ireland in the slogan of The Nation (1842–1900) — "To create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy of the soil" — adapted from a remark by Stephen Woulfe on the Irish Municipal Reform Bill. Similar earlier phrases were used by William Drennan in Letters of Orellana in 1785, and by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1831.

Questions about racy of the soil

What does racy of the soil mean?
Racy of the soil means deeply connected to a place, especially Ireland; indigenous.
What part of speech is racy of the soil?
Racy of the soil is an adjective.

Words near racy of the soil in the dictionary

  1. ractopamine
  2. RACV
  3. RACWA
  4. racy
  5. racy of one's soil
  6. racy of the soil
  7. Racz
  8. Raczes
  9. Raczka
  10. Raczkas
  11. Raczkowski

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: racy of the soil (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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