culchie, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

culchie n.

also culchy, culshie

[coined at University College, Galway, to describe agricultural students; ? Irish Coillte mach (Kiltimagh) Co. Mayo; Irish coillte, woods; Irish cúl a’ tí, the backdoor of the great house, to which peasants would be directed; note Behan, Confessions of an Irish Rebel (1965): ‘One night, Culchiemachs, as we call the Irish-speaking people, wished to play a game of pitch and toss’]

1. (Irish) a derog. term for a country-dweller, as used by a townsperson; note ad hoc v. used in cit. 1899.

[c.1790		‘The Munster-Man’s Bothabue’ Luke Caffrey’s Gost 3: But I’ll away to Culchy fair my Bothabue to find, / I’ll range the flow’ry meadows gay in hopes that they prove kind, / There is three doctors there and if they get the fee, / They will restore to me once more my sporting Bothabue].
1899		J.W. Davis Gawktown Revival Club 3: The typical western town, whose inhabitants have not as yet become smitten with a burning itch to be accounted ‘culchahed’ by the fag end of some remnant of a ‘higher civilization’.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 268: You’re coming on a very bright boy – for a Culchie.
1966		Eve. Press 21 Nov. n.p.: Stewmers are the next best thing to goms, but whilst a countryman was once pointed out to me as being a stewmer, you’ll find a few culchies who are goms [BS].
1970		C. Brown Down All the Days 170: That frosty-nosed bastard of a Corkman [...] A bleeding culshie for your life.
1979		J. Morrow Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 52: The townees hate the culchies worse than they do each other.
1986		B. Geldof Is That It? 26: We Dublin boys called the country pupils ‘culchies’, which they hated.
1991		B. Quinn Smokey Hollow 21: A crybaby as well as a culchie.
2000		J. Hawes Dead Long Enough 262: You really do think we’re all a bunch of eejit culchies, don’t you?
2002		Guardian Weekend 19 May 43: Like many Belfast residents, Pamela Hunter is a ‘culchy’, an urbanite’s derogatory term for country folk.
2004		A. Schuler When Gaelic Spirits Wake 101: ‘A culchie—well if I’m not a culchie than neither are the mother suckling sheep fuckers in Kerry!’.
2023		J. Haddo in X 19 Dec, 🌐 you can remove the culchie from the bog, but you can never truly remove the bog from the culchie!

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1991		R. Doyle Van (1998) 499: She was one of those culchie-looking women, roundy and red.
2000		J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 295: ‘Well, you never did a day’s work when you had two good hands [...]’ he says in a culshie accent.