racy of the soil
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.81 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
2
Syllables
12
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "We have got such foreign and fantastic field sports as lawn-tennis, polo, croquet, cricket, and the like—very excellent, I believe, and health-giving exercises in their way, still not racy of the soil, but rather alien, on the contrary, to it, as are, indeed, for the most part the men and women who first imported and still continue to patronise them."
- "RTÉ pundit Joe Brolly echoed this concern from his racy-of-the soil redoubt in the weekend’s Mail on Sunday."
- "In the hedge: ... purple loose-strife. (That our young maid's long purples call and literal shepherds give a grosser name. So racy of the soil!)"
- "Like the Church, the farmers exerted an unquestionable influence for the first 50 years of the State's existence. ... Just as to be truly Irish you had to be Catholic, you also had to be racy of the soil."
Etymology
See racy senses 2 and 3. Popularised in Ireland in the slogan of The Nation (1842–1900) — "To create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy of the soil" — adapted from a remark by Stephen Woulfe on the Irish Municipal Reform Bill. Similar earlier phrases were used by William Drennan in Letters of Orellana in 1785, and by Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1831.
Usage
Inflected Forms
more racy of the soil (comparative)
most racy of the soil (superlative)
racy of one's soil (alternative)