spalpeens

Noun

spalpeen (plural spalpeens)

1. (Ireland, ethnic, slur) A poor migratory farm worker in Ireland, often viewed as a rascal or mischievous and cunning person.
   • "And they stood you before the magistrates, like a spalpeen or a tinker." / "Sure the French wouldn't bring with them barrels of coppers for the spalpeens of Connaught. It is murder and bloodshed they would bring."1979, Thomas Flanagan, The Year of the French, New York, N.Y.: The New York Review of Books
2. (Ireland, endearing, sometimes) A good-for-nothing person.
   • [A] fortunate accident […] happened to me when I was a very little boy. A good-hearted old Irish nurse (whom I shall not forget in my will) took me up one day by the heels, when I was making more noise than was necessary, and, swinging me round two or three times, d——d my eyes for "a skreeking...1840 February, Edgar A[llan] Poe, “Peter Pendulum, the Business Man”, in William E[vans] Burton, Edgar Allan Poe, editors, Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and American Monthly Review, volume VI, number...