Peter Cullen wrote from Laraghbryan, Maynooth, with a few interesting expressions he heard in his youth in rural north Tipperary. The first one is aim's ace, and is used of a narrow escape: "I was within an aim's ace of being killed; I could feel the bull's breath on my neck."
Aims ace and its other written form ames ace should, I suppose, be written ambs-ace. This originally meant both aces, or double aces, the lowest possible cast at dice; then it came to mean very bad luck. The French gave us the expression. They said ambes as, both aces; and their phrase came from the Latin ambas, both, and as, smallest unit.
Mr Cullen's other expression is one I've never previously come across: "A much-used expression was `the real hookum snivvy', spoken with regard to something highly suitable. I never came across the expression again until some 60 years later I found it in a P.D. James novel, used by a police sergeant in deepest England".
In Edgeworth's Irish Bulls (1803) we find Hook-em-snivey: an indescribable machine, used by boys in playing head and harp. " `Billy', says I, `will you sky a copper?' `Done', says he. With that I arranged them fair and even with my hook-emsnivey: up they go."
I can see how the expression came to be used as one of approval, but I'd like to know what context P.D. James's sergeant used it in. You see, in Devonshire English hookem-snivey means deceitful, tricky, sly.
A lady from Naas wrote to ask me if the word gobshite is Irish. No, it was imported from England, where it is just as often spelled gawpshite and gaubshite. They tell me that it is now confined to the county Shakespeare grew up in and to Chester. The EDD glossed the word as a fool, a blockhead; an awkward, illkept, dirty person. The second element is from the unattested Old English scita, of Germanic origin; compare Old Norse skita, to defecate, and Middle Dutch schitte, excrement. The first element is related to dialect gaby, gawby, gooby, gorby etc., a simpleton, a lout, words of unknown origin, I'm sorry to say.
Finally a Letterkenny reader asks about a word she heard from a Scots friend: slink, meaning broke, skint. A word of Germanic origin, I'd say. You may compare the Dutch slinken, to diminish, to shrink.