Shelta

Shel·ta

(shĕl′tə)

A secret jargon used by traditionally itinerant people in Great Britain and Ireland, based on systematic inversion or alteration of the initial consonants of Gaelic words. Also called Cant, Gammon.

[From Shelta Sheldrū, perhaps alteration of Irish Gaelic béarla, language, English, from Old Irish bélrae, language, from bél, mouth.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Shelta

(ˈʃɛltə)

(Languages) a secret language used by some itinerant tinkers in Ireland and parts of Britain, based on systematically altered Gaelic

[C19: from earlier sheldrū, perhaps an arbitrary alteration of Old Irish bēlre speech]

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

Shel•ta

(ˈʃɛl tə)

n.

a private language, based in part on Irish, used among Travelers in the British Isles.

[1875–80; orig. uncertain]

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References in periodicals archive ?

This, she holds, is on account of ,other ethnicities, which she explores via languages: Irish Gaelic, Hiberno-English, Shelta (of Travelling People), Yola (from Co.

The globalization of Irish traditional song performance

Metel Ma Shelta A group of Lebanese graphic designers get clever with a very serious Lebanese problem: littering.

Lebanese Politician Tweets: A Week in Numbers

For hundreds of years, the Gypsies of the show's title, the Irish Travellerswho speak their own language of Shelta, a English dialect with heavy Irish/Gaelic influenceshave led a marginalized existence throughout the British Isles.

Polyester Brides

Insisting that Irish Travellers are not Gypsies or Roma, Burke acknowledges, with admirable care and sensitivity, their actual "otherness": the language called Shelta or Cant; a distinctive oral tradition; and unique cultural practices around marriage, the extended family, death, and more.

The most marginalized minority

I did so myself when I recorded the Traveller language, called Shelta by many academics and Cant by most Travellers.

Through the "Eye of the Skull": memory and tradition in a travelling landscape

Similarities and differences, borrowings and transformations, can be traced by the scholar (Cant, the Travellers' language, is 'Shelta' to academics).

William Cauley and Micheal O hAodha, Canting with Cauley: a Glossary of Travellers' Cant/Gammon

What kind of serious broadcaster can defend a neanderthal contestant by saying he didn't insult "Shelta Shetty" by calling her "Paki" because he called her a "c***"?