Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A strong dialectal accent, especially a strong Irish or Scottish accent when speaking English.
  • noun A heavy shoe of untanned leather, formerly worn in Scotland and Ireland.
  • noun A strong oxford shoe, usually with ornamental perforations or wingtips.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Formerly, in Ireland, a shoe made of rawhide, with the hair outward, reaching as far as the ankle and tied by thongs.
  • noun A similar foot-covering worn by the Scotch Highlanders, but commonly made of deer-hide, either freshly stripped off or half dried, and having holes to allow water to escape.
  • noun A smooth piece of wood worn on the foot in the operation of washing tin, when the ore is in fine particles.
  • noun A dialectal manner of pronunciation: especially used of the mode of pronouncing English peculiar to the Irish.
  • noun A variant of brog.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A stout, coarse shoe; a brogan.
  • noun patched brogues; also, brogues studded with nails. See under Clout, v. t.
  • noun A dialectic pronunciation; esp. the Irish manner of pronouncing English.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A strong dialectal accent. In Ireland it used to be a term for Irish spoken with a strong English accent, but gradually changed to mean English spoken with a strong Irish accent as English control of Ireland gradually increased and Irish waned as the standard language.
  • noun A strong Oxford shoe, with ornamental perforations and wing tips.
  • noun dated A heavy shoe of untanned leather.
  • verb transitive, intransitive To speak with a brogue (accent).
  • verb intransitive To walk.
  • verb transitive To kick.
  • verb transitive To punch a hole in, as with an awl.
  • verb dialect to fish for eels by disturbing the waters

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a thick and heavy shoe

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably from the brogues worn by farmers.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Irish and Scottish Gaelic bróg, from Old Irish bróc, shoe, possibly from Old Norse brōk, legging, or from Old English brōc; see breech.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Irish bróg ("boot, shoe"). The "accent" sense may instead be derived from Old Irish barrog ("a hold (on the tongue)").

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Possibly from French brouiller

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Examples

  • His brogue is pretty clear (he enunicates better that Craig Ferguson) so that would be fun.

    David Tennant gets a pilot: If anyone can save NBC, it's The Doctor, right? | EW.com 2009

  • "Mickey's gently lifting Irish brogue is enough to call a storm ....."

    Heroes or Villains? 2010

  • Fun fact: the word brogue is derived from the Gaelic word, bróg, which means "shoe."

    Outblush 2010

  • It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean, and presaged a misuse of infinitives and possessives with which he w as very familiar and which touched him nearly.

    Freckles 1904

  • It was scarcely definite enough to be called brogue, yet there was a trick in the turning of the sentence, the wrong sound of a letter here and there, that was almost irresistible to McLean, and presaged a misuse of infinitives and possessives with which he was very familiar and which touched him nearly.

    Freckles Gene Stratton-Porter 1893

  • His hair was short, and stuck up aggressively; his brogue was the strongest in the regiment; his blunders were innumerable, and his look of amazement at the laughter they called forth was admirably feigned, save that the twinkle of his eye induced a suspicion that he himself enjoyed the joke as well as anyone.

    With Moore at Corunna 1867

  • Simon Pegg plays Scotty as Simon Pegg with a brogue, which is exactly what I wanted to see.

    Ain't It Cool News - The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news. 2009

  • Cousin Mary was the very type of the beautiful old lady, with her silver hair and her sweet Southern Irish voice; foreigners must be warned that this resembles what they call a "brogue" about as little as the speech of a Highland gentleman resembles the jargon of the Glasgow slums.

    Surprised by Joy Lewis, C. S. 1955

  • But she did not give her "brogue" the inimitable twist she had given it in the practices, and her readings lacked their usual fire and appeal.

    Rilla of Ingleside Lucy Maud 1921

  • His face relaxes: he turns quietly, and gravely takes off his hat to the tuft, addressing the insect in a brogue which is the jocular assumption of a gentleman and not the natural speech of a peasant.

    John Bull's Other Island George Bernard Shaw 1903

Comments

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  • also, brogan

    August 18, 2008

  • Isn't this also a sort of an accent?

    August 19, 2008

  • Better known as wingtips in the U.S.

    October 23, 2008

  • I can't think of this word without remembering my grandmother. She had long, narrow feet that were hard to fit, especially back in the twenties when she was a bright young thing. When recalling shopping for dancing shoes in her youth (size 11), "All they ever had were brogues!"

    October 23, 2008

  • To fish for eels by disturbing the waters.

    Wiktionary provides this definition, but the same is also found in older printed sources as well. See for example the discussion under the entry for 'gloit' in Jamieson's <i>Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language</i>. 

    September 2, 2014