Sir, – Frank Fitzpatrick is clutching at straws in seeking a Gaelic origin for the word craic (Letters,August 20th).
Dublin was (literally) “great crack” when I lived there in the 1960s and 1970s and “craic” is a recent, artificial, concoction
Anyone who doubts the bogus Irishness of craic or that “craic” was spelt “crack” until 1990 need only search the Google Ngram viewer which plots the annual frequency of use of individual words and phrases.
The word-search database contains 500 billion words in five million books published since 1500.
While “great crack” has declined somewhat over the last hundred years the newcomer “great craic” increased a hundredfold from 1990 to 2000.
Using the Ngram tool is free, very easy and great crack.
– Yours, etc,
Dr JOHN DOHERTY
Gaoth Dobhair,
Co Dhún na nGall.