Irish buggy

British and Irish slang for a shovel, playing on the stereotype of Irish labourers doing digging work. The term reflects the long history of Irish migration to Britain for construction and manual labour, as well as the tendency in British slang to use Irish as a tag for humble or heavy work. Now dated.

A darkly humorous slang phrase for two black eyes — the kind you get after a serious fight. The joke plays on the idea of someone looking like they're wearing sunglasses due to two swollen, darkened eye sockets. Like many 'Irish X' constructions in old American slang, it emerged from a cultural environment that wasn't always kind to Irish immigrants, though it's been used self-deprecatingly within Irish-American communities too. It's largely dated today but pops up in classic noir fiction and old crime dramas.

An obsolete, ironic British slang term for a potato, playing on the historical stereotype of Irish dependence on the potato as a food staple. The term dates from a period when anti-Irish sentiment was widespread in Britain, and reflects the cultural shorthand that conflated Irish identity with potato farming and consumption. It is entirely archaic and would now be considered ethnically offensive. It appears in historical dictionaries and texts about British slang but has no living usage.