sheughs

Noun

sheugh (plural sheughs)

1. (Ireland, Scotland) A ditch, especially a field boundary ditch usually used to drain fields and mark their boundaries.
   • The original ditches were created by digging trenches, as boundaries and/or irrigation. But to the English, the ditch is the trench. Whereas in Ireland, the ditch is the raised bank of earth and the hedgerow on top. (As for the trench, where I come from that’s a sheugh).2013 October 31, Frank McNally, “When Anglophone lines get crossed”, in The Irish Times, Dublin: Irish Times Trust, archived from the original on 14 Mar 2021
2. (Northern Ireland, Scotland, colloquial, especially coastal) The space between the buttocks.
   • The sweat is running down the sheugh of my arse.
3. (Ireland, colloquial) The Atlantic Ocean; the sea.
   • The Irish Sea is the little sheugh, the Atlantic is the big sheugh.