knawvshawl

English

Alternative forms

• cnawvshawl, knauvshawl

Etymology

From Irish cnáimhseáil (“grumbling, complaining”).

Pronunciation

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Verb

knawvshawl (third-person singular simple present knawvshawls, present participle knawvshawling, simple past and past participle knawvshawled)

1. (Ireland, intransitive) to mutter or complain sullenly
   • 1984, John B. Keane, Man of the triple name‎, →ISBN, page 75:

     On the way home in the trap, that night, the uncle started to cnawvshawl. "Houl', you hoor," said Dan, "there's a woman as has been watching your nephew this while will be rightly annoyed now that he's promised.

   • 1997, The Irish review‎, numbers 20-21, page 123:

     Suzanne Vega stereotyped 'Calypso' as we knawvshawled about our families (our begetters and begotten, no worse than the next, whose umbilical cords we're still spancelled to) before we went on to our respective wanderings.

   • 1999, “The Leper and Civil Disobedience”, in Fortnight‎, numbers 376-390:

     Secured with ballast of repartee, we drifted past murky, shallow waters of literary knawvshawl and found ourselves navigating a course I can't recall we ever traversed.

   • 2000, Rory O'Connor, Gander at the gate‎, →ISBN, page 244:

     Nothing would do her but that the fort should be levelled, and she was ever grumbling and knawvshawling about it, if it wasn't about something else.