sheugh

English

Etymology

From Irish seoch, from English sough.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /ʃu/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ʃuːx/, /ʃuː/

  Rhymes: -uːx, -uː

• enPR: shŭᴋʜ, IPA^(key): /ʃʌx/

  Rhymes: -ʌx

Noun

sheugh (plural sheughs)

1. (Ireland, Scotland) A ditch, especially a field boundary ditch usually used to drain fields and mark their boundaries.
   • 2013 October 31, Frank McNally, “When Anglophone lines get crossed”, in The Irish Times‎, Dublin: Irish Times Trust, archived from the original on 14 March 2021:

     The original ditches were created by digging trenches, as boundaries and/or irrigation. But to the English, the ditch is the trench. Whereas in Ireland, the ditch is the raised bank of earth and the hedgerow on top. (As for the trench, where I come from that’s a sheugh).

2. (Scotland, colloquial, Northern Ireland, especially coastal) The space between the buttocks.

   The sweat is running down the sheugh of my arse.

3. (Ireland, colloquial) The Atlantic Ocean; the sea.

   The Irish Sea is the little sheugh, the Atlantic is the big sheugh.

Anagrams

• Hughes, heughs