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Definition 2024

shoneen ‎(plural shoneens)

(Ireland, derogatory) One who prefers English attitudes, customs or lifestyle to Irish ones.
- 1889: Good Father John O'Hart / In penal days rode out / To a shoneen who had free lands / And his own snipe and trout. — WB Yeats, ‘The Ballad of Father O'Hart’
- 1922: So then the citizens begin talking about the Irish language and the corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can’t speak their own language — James Joyce, Ulysses