Strange choice of words

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

While reading Sirius' latest entry, I noticed this sentence:
"Nothing's worse for a flu than getting up one's Irish (and, er, Molly's got more than most, old man)."

I have absolutely no idea what this is meant to mean. I can only guess it is some vaguely racist use of the word Irish to mean angry or frustrated, which is very odd. Can anyone shed light on this usage, I have never heard it before? It really makes very little grammatical sense.

Comments

OED

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

You got me curious enough to consult the OED. It's an American colloquialism:

B. noun (elliptical uses of the adj.)
...

5. Temper; passion. orig. U.S. and dial.
1834 D. CROCKETT Narr. Life iv. 30 Her Irish was up too high to do any thing with her. 1860 BARTLETT Dict. Amer. (ed. 3) 217 My friends say that my Irish is getting up, meaning, I am getting angry. 1877 F. ROSS et al. Gloss. Words Holderness 80/1 Iry; Irish, E. and N., passion; anger; rage; fury. 1933 PARTRIDGE Words, Words, Words! I. 9 Both Irish and the colloquial Paddy are used for anger. 1949 R. HARVEY Curtain Time vii. 73 But George's Irish was up. 1972 Evening Telegram (St. John's, Newfoundland) 23 June 1/4 ‘I got my Irish up,’ he said, ‘and here's a man that's going to fight back.’

Re: OED

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

Thats for the infomation, I am just surprised to see such casual racism in an online RPG, is that just me?

Re: OED

[alt_moderator]

I believe the intention's to provide an honest characterization. Unfortunately, some people are racist, and some characters are, too. There are Clueless White People - Clueless White Englishmen - in HP universe, I believe, and I can well imagine Sirius to be one of them.

(That said, yeah: casual racism sucks.)

Re: OED

[frozen-jelly.livejournal.com]

As Sirius comes from a family with many prejudices all of which he has come out in direct opposition to, engaging in offensive characterisations of a nationality - all Irish people are angry and love to fight! - I found it particularly jarring.

Re: OED

[alt_moderator]

Hmm. Well, I'm not Sirius' player, so I can't speak for Sirius. But one thing I've frequently wondered about was the status of racism within the Wizarding world. Maybe this is something that we ought to explore carefully within a plot. I have always assumed that wizards have about the same levels of racism as Muggles - that they don't think of prejudice against Muggles as the same thing as racism, and that even wizards who are extremely thoughtful about prejudice against Muggles might be racist. That said, I can't base those thoughts in canon, and we haven't talked about them in the OOC list.

I think this is definitely something we need to discuss, both in and out of character, so I'm glad that you're calling us out on it.

Re: OED

[alt-player.livejournal.com]

Corrected reply:

I (Sirius' player) became familiar with the phrase through an a capella arrangement of this 1947 song:

http://lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/c/clancyloweredtheboom.shtml

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clancy_Lowered_the_Boom).

And no, at midnight or whatever time it was, I didn't look up that the source is mostly an Americanism.

Re: OED

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

The OED's identification of the phrase as a US usage surprised me, too, though I couldn't have told you where or whether I'd actually heard it before. And I don't know what to make of the OED's specification that it was originally US or that it is/was "dial" (dialectal, I assume, but which dialects?).