shoneen
/ˈʃəʊniːn/
shoneen noun: an Irish person considered excessively Anglophile, an Irish person who acts English or desires to be part of English society.
Noun
shoneen (plural shoneens)
- An Irish person considered excessively Anglophile, an Irish person who acts English or desires to be part of English society.
- Good Father John O'Hart
In penal days rode out
To a shoneen who had free lands
And his own snipe and trout.1889, W B Yeats, The Ballad of Father O'Hart - So then the citizens begin talking about the Irish language and the corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can’t speak their own language1922, James Joyce, Ulysses
- Good Father John O'Hart
Synonyms of shoneen
Forms of shoneen
| plural | shoneens |
|---|
Origin of shoneen
Borrowed from Irish Seoinín (“Johnny”), from Seán (“John, John Bull”) + -ín (diminutive suffix).
Words formed from shoneen
- Shoneenism
Questions about shoneen
- What does shoneen mean?
- Shoneen means an Irish person considered excessively Anglophile, an Irish person who acts English or desires to be part of English society.
- What part of speech is shoneen?
- Shoneen is a noun.
- How do you pronounce shoneen?
- Shoneen is pronounced /ˈʃəʊniːn/.
- What is the plural of shoneen?
- The plural of shoneen is shoneens.
Words near shoneen in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shoneen (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: “shoneen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shoneen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.