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- Rife, a scythe-sharpener, a narrow piece of board punctured all over and covered with grease on which fine sand is sprinkled. Used before the present emery sharpener was known. (Moran: Carlow.) Irish ríabh [reev], a long narrow stripe.
- Right or wrong: often heard for earnestly: 'he pressed me right or wrong to go home with him.'
- Ringle-eyed; when the iris is light-coloured, and the circle bounding it is very marked, the person is ringle-eyed. (Derry.)
- Rings; often used as follows:—'Did I sleep at all?' 'Oh indeed you did—you slept rings round you.'
- Rip; a coarse ill-conditioned woman with a bad tongue. (General.)
- Roach lime; lime just taken from the kiln, burnt, before being slaked and while still in the form of stones. This is old English from French roche, a rock, a stone.
- Roasters; potatoes kept crisping on the coals to be brought up to table hot at the end of the dinner—usually the largest ones picked out. But the word roaster was used only among the lower class of people: the higher classes considered it vulgar. Here is how Mr. Patrick Murray (see p. 154) describes them about 1840 in a parody on Moore's 'One bumper at parting' (a lumper, in Mr. Murray's version, means a big potato):—
- 'One lumper at parting, though many
- Have rolled on the board since we met,
- The biggest the hottest of any
- Remains in the round for us yet.'
- 'One lumper at parting, though many
- In the higher class of houses they were peeled and brought up at the end nice and brown in
