All Topics  
Irish bull

 

 
   Email Print
   Bookmark   Link
 

 

Irish bull
 
 
  Topics Irish bull Topic Home

An Irish bull is a ludicrous, incongruent or logic
Logic

Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and inference. Logic is a branch of philosophy, a part of the classical Trivium . The word derives from Greek language ?????? , fem....
ally absurd statement, generally unrecognized as such by its author.

"Irish bull" originated in this use because such expressions often fall between two different statements, as between the horns of a bull. The Irish were supposedly peculiarly prone to such expressions due to their volubility, their taste for colourful metaphors, and their ignorance (or conversely excessive command) of the English language.






Discussion
Ask a question about 'Irish bull'
Start a new discussion about 'Irish bull'
Answer questions from other users
Full Discussion Forum



Encyclopedia


An Irish bull is a ludicrous, incongruent or logic
Logic

Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and inference. Logic is a branch of philosophy, a part of the classical Trivium . The word derives from Greek language ?????? , fem....
ally absurd statement, generally unrecognized as such by its author.

"Irish bull" originated in this use because such expressions often fall between two different statements, as between the horns of a bull. The Irish were supposedly peculiarly prone to such expressions due to their volubility, their taste for colourful metaphors, and their ignorance (or conversely excessive command) of the English language. Extensive use of Irish Bulls are made of by American Jewish humourists, from the period when large numbers of recent Jewish immigrants from Germany
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 or Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is a term that applies to the geopolitical region encompassing the easternmost part of the Europe. Throughout history and to a lesser extent today, parts of Eastern Europe has been distinguishable from Western Europe and other regions due to cultural, religious, economic, and historical reasons, even though there i...
 were present in American cities, which suggests that a similar effect produced the term "Irish Bull", which is partly contemptuous and partly homage
Homage

Homage is generally used in modern English language to mean any public show of respect to someone to whom one feels indebted. In this sense, a reference within a creative work to someone who greatly influenced the artist would be an homage....
.

The "Irish Bull" is to the sense of a statement what the dangling participle is to the syntax. A jarring or amusing absurdity is created by hastiness or lack of attention to speech or writing.

Although, strictly speaking, Irish bulls are so structured grammatically as to be logically meaningless, their actual effect upon listeners is usually to give vivid illustrations to obvious truths. Hence, as the Rev. Sir John Pentland Mahaffy
John Pentland Mahaffy

The Rev. Sir John Pentland Mahaffy Order of the British Empire Royal Victorian Order was an Ireland classicist and polymathic scholar....
, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, famously observed, "an Irish Bull is always pregnant", i.e. with truthful meaning.

The "father" of the Irish bull is often said to be Sir Boyle Roche
Boyle Roche

Sir Boyle Roche, 1st Baronet, Member of Parliament was a member of the Irish House of Commons. He is better remembered for the language of his speeches than his politics—they were riddled with mixed metaphors , malapropisms and other unfortunate turns of phrase ....
, who once asked ""Why we should put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity ever done for us?". Roche may have been Sheridan's
Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Richard Brinsley Sheridan was an Irish playwright and British Whig Party statesman....
 model for Mrs Malaprop
Malapropism

A malapropism is the substitution of an incorrect word for a word with a similar sound, usually to comic effect. It is not the same as an eggcorn, which is a similar substitution in which the new phrase makes sense on some level....
.

Samuel Goldwyn
Samuel Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn was an American film producer, and founding contributor executive of several motion picture studios....
 was a famous American mis-speaker, as was Yogi Berra
Yogi Berra

Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra is a former Major League Baseball player and manager. He played almost his entire career for the New York Yankees and was elected to the baseball National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in 1972....
 (see Examples below).

The Irish Bull can be a potent form of self-conscious equivocation and satire in the hands of a wit's sharp tongue. As such, it is associated particularly with new or marginalized populations, such as the Irish in Britain in the Nineteenth Century, or the Jews and Germans in America in the Early Twentieth Century.

Examples


  • "If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive."
- Samuel Goldwyn, movie producer (1882-1974)
  • "Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours."
- Yogi Berra, baseball player (1925- )
  • "Back to back, they faced each other"
- Anonymous
  • "He'd be turning in his grave if he were alive today"
- Anonymous
  • "Hold me back while I hit him"
-Anonymous
  • "It would be a lovely day if it wasn't for the weather"
-Anonymous
  • "He had a sword in each hand and a rifle in the other,"
-Anonymous

Footnotes



Other references


See also


  • Colemanballs
    Colemanballs

    Colemanballs is a term coined by Private Eye magazine to describe verbal error perpetrated by sportscaster. It is derived from the surname of the now retired BBC broadcaster David Coleman and the suffix -balls, as in "to balls up", and has since spawned derivative terms in unrelated fields such as "Warballs" and "Dianaballs" ....
  • Oxymoron
    Oxymoron

    An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two normally contradiction terms. Oxymoron is a loanword from Greek language oxy and moros ....