Taken from an extract from his book, 32 Words For Field, which has been nominated in the An Post Irish Book Awards.

Here are some traditions described in an Irish poem that claim to help find a suitor.

The Royal Bank of Scotland did not mention the meaning as Gaeilge of their online banking app Bó.

We should look at names we don’t understand as something exciting to be figured out, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

The Brexit process should be a golden age for satirists and comedians, but unfortunately, something else has happened, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

In some ways, it is serendipitous that these two events should happen on the same Sunday, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Did you know that Nigel Farage and Keanu Reeves were born in the same year? It’s hard enough to accept that they are the same species, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

To translate the meaning of Bridezilla effectively we need to pop the bonnet of the word and look at the moving parts, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

The word appears to originate before 1900 in parts of Ireland where spoken Irish was high and literacy was low, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Sometimes Béarla and Gaeilge are presented as being in conflict in Ireland, but they’re both part of our cultural heritage, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

J. R. R. Tolkien once tried to learn Irish in Galway but he dismissed the language as suffering from “fundamental unreason,” writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Thanks to Queen Bé, April 2019 has been an interesting month for accessorised letters, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

‘Thousands of Irish people know their rights if they’re arrested in America but not if they’re arrested in Ireland… and nobody would know what mitosis was if it wasn’t for Sabrina,’ writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Gaeilgeoirí often feel the odds are stacked against them. Even when we are right we still end up looking like a spoilsport or a pain in the arse, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

The German R&B duo dominated the charts at the time and one of them even claimed to be the “new Elvis”, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Sure enough, one of the longest, best laid-out and most carefully edited pages in An Vicipéid is the page on Star Trek, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

If you’re doing your Irish oral exam next week – you’ll need to know how to say ‘confidence and supply agreement’ and ‘frictionless border’, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

My daughter speaks mostly in English but there are also lots of words that she only knows the Irish for – so she mixes them in, writes Caoimhín De Barra.

George Orwell said that history was a palimpsest – a chalkboard which could be scraped clean and reinscribed, exactly as often as necessary, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Satire (Áer) was taken as seriously as physical assault in old Ireland and a range of satirical offences were deemed to warrant compensation, including ‘coining a nickname that sticks’, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Did the knights of the Fianna use their frithbacáin (handbrake) to do doughnuts, and other boy racer tricks, in the medieval equivalent of an industrial estate? wonders Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Aerach means gay in both the modern sense as well as the original meaning of happy and carefree writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Different languages across the world look at the spectrum and make different calls on where certain colours begin and end, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

With the United Kingdom set to leave the European Union this year, it’s time for Hiberno English to become the official language of the EU, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

The fact that the Irish words for duck and lake sound similar gives an alliterative flourish to a seanfhocal about not sweating the small stuff: Ní troimide an loch an lacha – the lake is not heavier for having a duck on it, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Hó hó hó! Darach Ó Séaghdha has a selection box of Irish words for Christmas.

As one of the first human inventions fire is often used as a metaphor for human civilisation and its downsides, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Darach Ó Séaghdha has a typecast character for every letter in the alphabet – the funny one, the vulgar one, the one with notions or the one who sucks all the craic clean out of the room.

Codladh Geimhridh literally means ‘winter sleep’ and is the Irish for hibernation. Sometimes that feels like a viable option in the Land of Eternal Winter (Hibernia), writes Darach Ó Séaghdha.

Dogs took centre stage in Irish mythology, stories and proverbs, just like they dominate our social media feeds today, writes Darach Ó Séaghdha

The Irish term for a jellyfish translates literally as seal snot. If this floats your boat you might also enjoy mathair shúigh – suckmother – for squid.

Is V a cheeky stowaway in the Irish language? Darach Ó Séaghdha takes a look.