While it’s not totally clear why this shift occurred, it could have something to do with Ireland’s increased cultural visibility during that era. A notable example is found in the catchphrase Beidh ceol, caint agus craic againn ( meaning “We will have music, chat, and fun”), which is how Irish broadcaster Seán Bán Breathnach kicked off his chat show SBB ina Shuí in the 1970s and early 1980s.īut craic didn’t stay confined to Irish-language contexts, and by the turn of the century it had begun to supplant crack as the favored spelling in English. It didn’t take long for Irish speakers to start Gaelicizing crack as craic when they were speaking or writing in Irish. “You say you’d like a joke or two for a bit of crack and the finger of scorn is pointed at you,” he wrote in character as “The Plain People of Ireland.” How Crack Became Craic The OED’s earliest written reference to crack in the “fun” sense is from a satirical newspaper column written by Brian O’Nolan (better known as Flann O’Brien) under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen sometime before 1966. There, the word took on its current meaning as “fun.” But that sense didn’t really gain momentum until well into the 20th century-and initially, it was still spelled crack, not craic. The term later made the leap to Ulster, Ireland’s northernmost historical province, which today encompasses all of Northern Ireland and three counties in the Republic of Ireland (Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal). Geoffrey Chaucer mentioned one of its forms in “ The Reeve’s Tale” (from The Canterbury Tales): “He craketh boost, and swoor it was nat so.”Ī late-19th-century illustration of Oswald the reeve from 'The Canterbury Tales.' / whitemay/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Imagesīy the 1500s, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, people in Scotland and Northern England had started using crack to mean “to converse briskly and sociably, chat, talk of the news.” Eventually (circa the 1700s, per the OED), crack became a noun describing that kind of chat. In fact, craic is pseudo-Irish, derived from the English word crack, which itself has roots in the Middle English craken and the Old English cracian.Ĭraken and cracian were both verbs meaning “to make a sharp sound,” but craken could also mean “to talk,” especially loudly and/or boastfully. These days, the concept of craic is considered quintessentially Irish-but it didn’t start out that way. This sense has given way to What’s the craic?, a general greeting that’s essentially a synonym for What’s up? or How’s it going?. As The Irish Times reported, “Some dissenting voices applauded the performers, wished they had been on the flight themselves and chided the naysayers as ‘no craic’ and ‘dry shites.’”Ĭraic can also mean “news” or “gossip,” as in the phrase Any craic?. In November 2023, after footage of musicians playing an impromptu concert during an Aer Lingus flight was posted to social media, commenters had mixed feelings about whether that seemed like great craic or not. Having the craic basically means “having fun,” as it did in 2018 when Bernard O’Shea, a one-time contestant on Ireland’s Dancing with the Stars, told The Irish Times, “If it was called ‘Having the Craic with the Stars,’ I would have won it.” Take, for example, this sentence from a 1992 article in The Star about Irish rock band The Saw Doctors and their time on Clare Island: “The lads first came to this lovely island two years ago when they heard there was a festival here and decided to go for the craic.” Craic or the craic just refers more generally to the kind of fun you’d expect to have in a group setting. But while craic is often modified by an adjective, it still makes sense without one. The Meaning of CraicĬraic, pronounced “crack,” is used to describe the fun (or lack of fun) had at any given social gathering-not unlike how American English speakers use the word time (e.g. Here’s what it means, how to use it correctly, and where it came from (which, surprisingly, wasn’t Ireland). Of all the colorful Irish slang terms, craic is probably the most fun (literally).
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