http://wordie.org/words/donnybrook Comments for the word 'Donnybrook' http://wordie.org http://wordie.org/words/donnybrook#comments And now we use it to describe companies battle for brand superiority: "But that campaign is just a slapfight compared with the donnybrooks that have broken out in other product categories." --John Carroll, WBUR (http://www.wbur.org/news/2008/81551_20081124.asp) Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:09:53 +0000 http://wordie.org/words/donnybrook#comments http://wordie.org/words/donnybrook#comments A scene of uproar and disorder; a heated argument. <br /> <br />We are in Ireland, in what was once a village on the high road out of Dublin but which is now one of that city’s suburbs. King John gave a licence in 1204 to hold an annual fair in Donnybrook. <br /> <br />By the eighteenth century it had become a vast assembly, held on August 26 and the following 15 days each year, a gathering-place for horse dealers, fortune-tellers, beggars, wrestlers, dancers, fiddlers, and the sellers of every kind of food and drink. It was renowned in Ireland and beyond for its rowdiness and noise, and particularly for the whiskey-fuelled fighting that went on after dark. A passing reference in, of all sober works, Walter Bagehot’s The English Constitution of 1867, gives a flavour: "The only principle recognised ... was akin to that recommended to the traditionary Irishman on his visit to Donnybrook Fair, ‘Wherever you see a head, hit it’." The usual weapon was a stick of oak or blackthorn that Irishmen often called a shillelagh (a word which derives from the town of that name in County Wicklow). The legend was that visitors to Donnybrook fair would rather fight than eat. <br /> <br />As Donnybrook progressively became a residential suburb of Dublin, the fair became more and more a nuisance until a campaign was got up to have it closed; in 1855 the rights to the fair were bought up by Dublin Corporation and it was suppressed. It was around that time that its name started to be used to describe a brawl, at first in the form like Donnybrook fair but then elliptically. <br />(from <a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org">World Wide Words</a>) Tue, 20 May 2008 18:47:07 +0000 http://wordie.org/words/donnybrook#comments http://wordie.org/words/donnybrook#comments Named after Donnybrook Fair, infamous in the 19th century for its faction fights; long since gentrified. 'It has turned into a veritable donnybrook', Apu watching mob warfare unfold in one episode of The Simpsons Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:53:43 +0000 http://wordie.org/words/donnybrook#comments