The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #152099   Message #3555997
Posted By: Phil Edwards
04-Sep-13 - 04:55 AM
Thread Name: Irish? Sez who? and why?
Subject: RE: Irish? Sez who? and why?
Incidentally, "lish" is an old Cumbrian dialect word meaning "nimble, agile, fit". Nobody seems to know where it comes from. One nineteenth-century lexicographer linked it speculatively with another local word of Nordic origin, "lysk" meaning "the groin". "Lis" is contemporary Norwegian for "light" or "fair"; it's not quite the same meaning, but it seems closer.