Green’s Dictionary of Slang

beating up Irish people, usu. used of soldiers in Northern Ireland.

2000

J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 99: The best days of his life, Paddy bashing, fuckin Fenians and cuntin Prods as well, cos they’re all just shit-shovelling Micks, ain’t they, all the same.

see sense 5 above.

(US black) the desire for sex with white men or women.

1969

‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 223: I don’t have white fever. [...] They were [...] saying you had paddy fever.

any boisterous occasion, not necessarily a wake.

1979		Maledicta III:2 163: Paddy funeraln 1: Festive funeral procession 2: Any boisterous affair.
1997		Share Slanguage.

see sense 5 above.

Ireland; thus Paddy-lander, an Irish person.

1821		D. Haggart Autobiog. 113: Paddyland is the land for pickpockets.
1821		J. Burrowes Life in St George’s Fields 12: Though, to use the expression of the King when in Paddy’s land, — I am all Surrey.
1835		‘Thomas Brown’ Fudge Family in England 121: In the bogs of old Paddy-land.
1838		J. Grant Sketches in London 216: Go home to Paddy’s Land, you spalpeen of an Irishman.
1842		J. Labern ‘Paddy McShane’ Comic Songs 24: May Glory smile o’er Paddy’s Isle.
1860		‘Yelverton Marriage Case’ in C. Hindley Curiosities of Street Lit. (1871) 133: He took then to Paddy’s land / So gentle, meek and clever.
1868		in My Young Wife and I Songster 44: [song title] I’m Off To Paddy’s Land.
1874		‘Old Calabar’ Won in a Canter I 67: ‘I must take you out of England now to Paddy’s land’.
1875		E.L. Linton Patricia Kemball I 219: He once went over on business to what he always called Paddy-land.
1878		Iola Register (KS) 5 Oct. 6/6: A native of Paddyland asked a neighbor if he had ever seen a red blackberry.
1887		Salt Lake Herald (UT) 10 July 16/2: Reconnoitering the green shores of the Emerald Isle [...] we rested a short time, talking on passengers and luggage, relieving Paddy’s land of some of her enterprising ‘childer’.
1898		Scanton Trib. (PA) 2 Sept. 4/2: We are better pleased that the cup has gone to Paddy’s land than to any other spot across the Atlantic.
1905		Sporting Times 25 Feb. 1/2: You take the game to Paddyland to teach to Kate or Barney, / They will tell you it is lovely, and will help you till you’re led.
1917		‘Henry Handel Richardson’ Aus. Felix (1971) 38: Oh, just a couple o’ stony-broke Paddy-landers.
1940		Western Mail (Perth) 3 Oct. 4s/7: I’m Murphy of Bungalow Station, / I come of the Paddyland nation.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 279: The Irish Paddy has been elaborated in various ways, e.g., Paddyland, the place where the Paddies come from.
1997		Share Slanguage.
2016		Twitter 28 June 🌐 Since Friday, the racist messages have starting coming in larger numbers too, along the lines of ‘fuck off back to paddyland you fucking IRA c***’.

a fight that entails more verbal than physical aggression.

1823

‘Jon Bee’ A Dict. of the Turf, The Ring, The Chase, etc. 132: ‘A Paddy-row,’ more jackets off than blows struck, where sticks supply the place of fists.

(N.Z.) potatoes.

2003

McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

(Irish) illicitly distilled whisky, poteen.

1886		Judy 4 Aug. 58: He imbibed stupendous quantities of jiggered gin, dogs nose, and Paddys eye-water [F&H].
1906		Salt Lake City (UT) 30 Mar. 4/5: He has been taking a little of Paddy’s eyewater.
1997		Share Slanguage.

see paddy funeral

see separate entry.

the moon.

1982

N. Keesing Lily on the Dustbin 164: There are lots of these old Paddy expressions, often denigratory of the irish: ‘Paddy’s lantern’ (the moon).

1. any kind of cheap market.

1858		‘Shadow’ Midnight Scenes 102: We find ourselves again in what seems to be a continuartion of ‘Paddy’s Market’ or ‘Rag Fair’.
1892		H. Lawson ‘Jones’s Alley’ in Roderick (1972) 36: Paddy’s market — the eloquent advertisment of a young city’s sin and poverty and rotten wealth.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 11 Aug. 38/2: Then everything will start to burn and crackle, and Satan will appear in the Post Office tower and stop the clock. All the people will be gathered together from the workshops and the mines and Paddy’s Market, and Fat will dock their time.
1955		B. Appel Tough Guy [ebook] [The] swiped fruit from Paddy’s Market on Ninth [Avenue].
2017		A. Parks Bloody January 64: Paddy’s Market [in Glasgow] was under the railway arches down by the Clyde. It was the market for people whose kids didn’t have shoes, who tea was bread and jam or a bag of chips if they were lucky.
2020		A. Parks Bobby March Will Live Forever 153: ’She collects all sorts of shite, tries to find stuff to sell at Paddy’s’.

2. the weekly market for cheap or secondhand goods held in the late 19C near Haymarket Square in Melbourne.

1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 31 Jan. 22/3: Unfortunately for the world at large (and in gaol also), before these people had time to spit on their hands and start off on their new career, up comes this Bungwall Teuton with a cock-and-bull yarn that he is as much alive to-day as the oldest cheese in Paddy’s Market.
1892		H. Nisbet Bushranger’s Sweetheart 37: Latour’s Coffee Palace, Little Collins Street, near Paddy’s Market.
1911		L. Stone Jonah 12: On Saturday night they went to Bob Fenner’s dance-room, or strolled down to Paddy’s Market .

lit. or fig. empty, worthless, i.e. ‘footless and without a leg’.

1846

Censor (London) 25 Jan. 5/1: H]is triumph was equal to Paddy’s stocking—footless, and without a leg.

see paddywhack almanac under paddywhack n.

(orig. US) the vehicle in which arrested people are transported to the local police station or prison (cf. pat wagon under Pat n.).

1908		St. John’s Rev. (OR) 29 May 3/5: There is a Paddy-wagon ride coming in any event.
1909		Chicago Daily Trib. 12 Sept. E3: Don’t it make you think of the paddy wagon going down the street to pinch a gambling joint?
1914		Wash. Post Misc. 15 Mar. 1/5: ‘A ‘peetman’ is a safeblower, and when he blows a safe he ‘cracks a joint.’ If he is caught and taken to the station in the ‘paddy wagon’ he may be given ‘six months in the buck’ or a ‘long bit’ or a ‘short bit’.
1915		Day Book (Chicago) 17 Sept. 3/1: The ‘paddy’ wagon of the St Charles home for juveniles was just about ready to pull out [...] when one young fellow [...] jumped out the back door and made a break for freedom.
1927		F.M. Thrasher Gang 128: ‘[T]he police had to put a stop to [gang thefts] by picking participants up and putting them into the ‘paddy’ wagons’.
1930		J.T. Farrell ‘Curbstone Philosophy’ Short Stories (1937) 214: Dere was a riot, and dey called de paddy.
1947		N. Algren Neon Wilderness (1986) 250: The paddy wagon pulled away south down State.
1956		N. Algren Walk on the Wild Side 244: ‘Who’s that?’ she asked the paddy wagon gloom, ‘Who’s else takin’ this ride?’.
1965		K. Marlowe Mr Madam (1967) 130: The nicest, biggest, blackest, shiniest Paddy-waggon was backed right up to the door for us.
1971		J. Mandelkau Buttons 104: We were all loaded into the paddywagons.
1978		R. Caron Go-Boy! 47: The roadway was patrolled by a black scout car and a paddy wagon.
1985		R.G. Barrett You Wouldn’t Be Dead for Quids (1989) 176: A paddy-wagon driven by three trepidatious but hard-faced policemen cruised past.
1986		C. Hiaasen Tourist Season (1987) 124: I got a rear bumper missing off a paddy wagon.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 67: The cops herded all the girls out and into the paddy wagons.
1997		L. Davies Candy 155: I walked handcuffed and flanked through Bourke Street Mall to the paddy wagon.
2003		Thirstin Howlin’ III ‘Walk the Walk’ 🎵 Squad car, paddy wagons, snitch bitch.
2004		T. Winton ‘Long, Clear View’ in Turning (2005) 200: Every night at dusk a paddy wagon cruises by.
2010		Codella and Bennett Alphaville (2011) 76: Why didn’t somebody send a half-dozen paddy wagons down there.
2017		New European (London) 3-9 Aug. 10/2: Trump [...] suggested that their [i.e. arrestees’] heads should be banged against the roofs of paddy wagons.
2017		T. Spicer Good Girl Stripped Bare 47: We’re thrown in the back of a ‘divvy van’ (Also called a ‘paddy wagon’ [...] Those Irish, always up to no good).
2020		Twitter 31 May 🌐 The only thing I can really get from talking to cops in the paddy wagon tonight is that at this point they’re just in a fucking cult.

(US black) a derog. term for a white person; also. ext. to Chicanos and Latinos.

1980

E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 54: Terms usually identified with white people — grey, honky, whitey, peckerwood, paddywood.

to bamboozle, to confuse, to ‘blarney’.

1834		Sun (N.Y.) 3 Jan. 2/3: You don’t come paddy over me after that sort.
1837		Morning Herald (N.Y.) 1 July 2/3: Charles Enroff, charged with coming paddy over an Irish shoemaker, and thereby cheating him out of a pair of shoes.
1838		The History of the ‘Striped Pig’ n.p.: If I don’t ‘come the paddy’ over these self-styled temperance folks, I’m mistaken!
1858		Bell’s Life in Sydney 27 Nov. 3/2: That conversation did not take place on the first intercourse taking place between us, but the first time he came Paddy over me on the top of the stairs.

(N.Z.) very stupid.

1998–99

Charles Hoy Fort Ructions 🌐 Out of me sight! Ye skinny half-fed creature! Ye’re as ignorant as Paddy’s pig! I’m a college-bred man! Out of me sight, you half-fed ignoranimouse!

(orig. milit.) a thrashing, a beating.

1849		Sam Sly 2 June 1/3: We advise old Crockford [...] to act more like a gentleman, [...] or he will get what Paddy gave the drum, a good thrashing.
1856		Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 11 Oct. n.p.: We would advise H—d R—l to stop his blowing, or he will recive what Paddy gave the drum.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 261/2: What Paddy gave the drum (Irish Military, 1845). Elegant euphemism for a sound thrashing, as ‘I’ll give you what Paddy gave the drum’.
1927		C. Woofter ‘Dialect Words and Phrases from West-Central West Virginia’ in AS II:8 355: Tom got what Paddy gave the drum at the carnival yesterday.