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Ridicule vs Spalpeen - What's the difference?

ridicule | spalpeen |

As nouns the difference between ridicule and spalpeen

is that ridicule is derision; mocking or humiliating words or behaviour while spalpeen is a poor migratory farm worker in Ireland, often viewed as a rascal or mischievous and cunning person.

As a verb ridicule

is to criticize or disapprove of someone or something through scornful jocularity; to make fun of.

As an adjective ridicule

is ridiculous.

ridicule

English

Verb

(ridicul)
  • to criticize or disapprove of someone or something through scornful jocularity; to make fun of
    • His older sibling constantly ridiculed him with sarcastic remarks.

    Synonyms

    * (l)

    Noun

  • derision; mocking or humiliating words or behaviour
  • * Alexander Pope
    • Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, / Yet touched and shamed by ridicule alone.
  • An object of sport or laughter; a laughing stock.
  • * Buckle
    • [Marlborough] was so miserably ignorant, that his deficiencies made him the ridicule of his contemporaries.
  • * Foxe
    • To the people but a trifle, to the king but a ridicule .
  • The quality of being ridiculous; ridiculousness.
  • * Addison
    • to see the ridicule of this practice

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Related terms

    * deride * derision * ridiculous * ridiculosity

    See also

    * humiliation

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (obsolete) ridiculous
    • This action became so ridicule . — Aubrey.
    (Webster 1913)

    External links

    * * ----

    spalpeen

    English

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (Irish) A poor migratory farm worker in Ireland, often viewed as a rascal or mischievous and cunning person.
  • (Irish) A good-for-nothing person, often used so-named during a good humored ridicule.

    • Quotations

    * 1979 , , The Year of the French (New York: The New York Review of Books): *: "And they stood you before the magistrates like a spalpeen or a tinker." *: "Sure the French wouldn't bring with them barrels of coppers for the spalpeens of Connaught. It is murder and bloodshed they would bring." * 2002 , Joseph O'Conner, Star of the Sea (Vintage 2003), page 25: *: The men were mainly evicted farmers from Connaught and West Cork, beggared spalpeens from Carlow and Waterford; a cooper, some farriers, a horse-knacker from Kerry; a couple of Galway fishermen who had managed to sell their nets.

    See also

    * guttersnipe

    References

    * merriam-webster.com. * [http://www.thefreedictionary.com/spalpeen]. * encarta MSN. * Spalpeen. The New Oxford American Dictionary. Second ed. English words suffixed with -een