Liz Warren | Storyteller

Barry and Bob and I had dinner with Brian Garvan, Jackie
Gorman, and Tony McCormack of Tullamore’s Atlantic Corridor Group at the Left Bank Restaurant in Athlone on Tuesday evening. Everyone was
trading stories, and Jackie in particular had us rolling.  She is a fabulous raconteuse, with a great facility
for finding herself in unusual circumstances and for the telling detail.  She regaled us with her recent trip to New
York City (transvestite bingo), experiences she had at J.J. Houghs Singing Pub
in Banagher (The proprietor’s dentures in a glass of Guinness, “I was looking
for those.”), and what might happen at the funeral of her 92 year old aunt the
next day (disputes over who the departed loved the most).

We got to talking about some Irish terms for disreputable
folks:  cute hoor, sleeveen, and gobshite. Cute in Ireland often means clever, and a hoor is a whore. A sleeveen (pronounced shleeveen) is an
underhanded, dishonest person.  The word
even sounds slippery.  Barry maintained
that the equivalent in English would be douchebag, but I insisted that a
douchebag would be a better match for gobshite.  I offered “player’ for sleeveen, but that was
rejected since player has a sexual connotation that sleeven does not.

Meanwhile, Jackie was looking them up on the Urban
Dictionary.
Here’s their definitions for cute hoor:

1.	cute hoor
	phrase used in Ireland to describe a slippery customer, a rogue, a charlatan, someone who seems upstanding or innocent and mild but who never misses an opportunity to screw you over, scam you, rip you off or hide their farcical f**k ups, blame everyone else for the s**t they cause and generally lure you into their Machiavellian trap… unsurprisingly generally applied to cowboy politicians, corrupt rich tax evaders and their ilk 1. Peader: Ah sure Seamus I'd be doing ye a favour if I bought them there sorry lookin' cows off ye for tuppence.  Seamus: Ah would you go and shite ya cute hoor, I'm not a feckin eejit! They're worth their weight in spuds!
2.	cute hoor
	An Irish slang word used mostly to describe a sly, crafty little conniving bollix of a fella, only out to bleed the tax payers or friends alike dry of money to use for their own benefits. a bit of a chancer. "hoor" is pronounced like "sewer"

According to the Urban Dictionary, sleeveen is not too different, but doesn’t seem to have the
association with politics.

In the picture at the top from the left are me, Barry Vaughan, Tony McCormack, Brian Garvan, Jackie Gorman, and Bob Farwell