I just read through this thread, and also the earlier one someone linked to, way up there somewhere.

Does no one remember the early commericial-folk-revival trio The Tarriers? They weren't as successful as the Kingston Trio or the Highwaymen or any of a bunch of others, but they managed to get themselves on (American) TV for a while there, I'm guessing around '63-64. I *think* one of the three played the big string bass, but I'm not sure. Naturally, they sang "Drill Ye Tarriers."

I always figured there were two essentially unrelated meanings of the word "tarrier":

(A) - One who tarries, i.e., hangs around, waits, delays, etc. I never thought the verb (to) "tarry" was an especially exotic word, even though it's not very commonly used. In a romantic/sexual context, the word seems to connote inactivity, non-participation, failure to respond, etc. -- *that* kind of delaying. As noted somewhere above, the word "dally" has the opposite connotation, even though both words mean to wait or to delay. One who dallies stays behind to engage in a bit of romance while the rest of the world keeps moving along.

(B) - A worker engaged in heavy-duty hammering and blasting, as in 19th century railroad and tunnel building. Who knows whether it comes from "terra" for earth, "terrier" for diging doggie, "terence" for being Irish and working all day for the sugar in your tay, or whatever.

One more thing -- to whoever offered the observation about the living language of English, that new and colorful verbal expression is alive and well in Ireland and Australia but "sadly not in North America " -- I *seriously* beg to differ!

We have more different kinds of people in more different subcultures here in the US than anywhere else, and everyone is rewriting the language all the time. You might not *like* all the neologisms (I certainly don't), but they're not all bad, they portray a very entertaining and very wide variety of viewpoints, and some of this stuff is gonna stay with us (tarry?) and become part of standard worldwide colloquial English. I mean, for crying out loud, we've got technocrats and hepcats, valley girls, speakers of Yiddish and Spanglish, Anglophiles -- you name it. Not to mention the huge and not-yet-fully-integrated African aspect of American culture. C'mon already!