An Irish English term for a young boy, especially one employed as a servant or general helper.
An Irish English term for a young boy, especially one employed as a servant or general helper. The word has a nostalgic, rural Irish flavour and appears frequently in 19th and early 20th-century Irish literature. It is warm in register, often evoking the hardworking boys of agrarian Ireland.
He'd been a gossoon on the estate since he was ten, fetching turf and running errands.
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Regional slang from around the English-speaking world — British, Australian, Irish, Caribbean, Nigerian, Filipino, AAVE, and the hyphenated-English dialects that make the internet sound local.
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(Ireland) A young boy, a servant boy; a lackey.