Scallions is not an Americanism

[Monty27]

I got accused today of using an Americanism. I said it's Irish, it became transaltantic after the famine.
Scallions in mash on st Patrick's Day is Irish. With cabbage and bacon of course. No Guinness but Irish coffees and beers and cava I was hosting

It is an Irish word. And where I am from in Northern Ireland, the mash you describe is called “champ”.

Actually my dad’s pronounciation is closer to she-boons than gibbons.

Wow - maybe us Glaswegians call them syboes (pronounced sybees).

I've heard scallions used in Newcastle, so it extends some way south of the border

I live in Co Durham, not far from both borders of Teesside and Tyne and Wear and we always called them scallions. I actually googled this just a few days ago, wondering why they're called spring onions everywhere these days and Google informed me that scallion was American.

Thank you for this thread!

Am I right in saying that people in the NW of England also use the word gansey for jumper? We have that in Ireland as geansaí. It's the Irish variant of Guernsey jumper and I imagine gansey was probably brought to the North of England by Irish immigrants.

I only know rapscallion which is usually shortened to rascal. The former really does sound American.

I would call spring onions - spring onions!

We use gansie here too, but there’s no Irish influence that I’m aware of. I’d thought it was local dialect - clearly wrong! But we can’t get much further away from guernsey so I’m guessing (now) it’s said throughout the UK?

I'd say Irish but my mother tongue is confused!

It’s said on Scotland.

Definitely syboes pn cybees in the West of Scotland, my family are fruit and veg wholesalers and thats what they are sold to the trade as.

Syboes here in Scotland, which 8s pronounced sybees.

It's scallions here in NI. I grow them. There are very easy to grow.

Americanism my foot!

In reality there are no such things as Americanisms, the English language has evolved differently but it's still English, which in itself is a conglomeration of other languages and old English. Much of what people don't like from America is old English which has changed over the last 500 years, notably the dreaded 'gotten'.

Scallions Irish
Syboes Scottish
Spring onions English

Where do people think the Americans got their language from?

I think that’s the OPs point, it’s a name which has migrated from Ireland to America, not an ‘Americanism’ which has travelled to Ireland

Definitely scallions amongst the Geordie family members. No Irish or American relatives.

I was brought up in North East England. I hadn't heard of spring onions until I went to university in "The South".

Everyone I knew called them scallions.
Similarly I earned that "southerners" had a problem with turnips ... (to me they are purple skinned with orange flesh, and we made turnip lanterns at Halloween) and Swedes ...(small white things, couldn't get a night light in them if you tried)

Swedes arr huge. Turnips are tiny.

We don't have Swedes in Ireland. Aside from the two legged kind. All turnipy things are just called turnips.

Sorry to have hijacked the thread.

Whoever accused you of that is talking shite. I'm Irish and I heard them called Scallions long before I ever heard them being called Spring Onions or anything else. The word itself seem to a Middle English one which has been derived from Latin.... en.wiktionary.org/wiki/scallion#Etymology

American here never called then scallions, they are Green onions and if I'm in UK I call them spring onions

@Troels where in the US did you grow up? In New York, they're commonly called scallions or green onions.