Nancy Pearson from Shankill, Co Dublin, and I have been corresponding about words for many years: since she worked in the Royal Irish Academy on its Irish dictionary, in fact. I was glad to hear from her again the other day; glad too that she reminded me of a word from west Cork my father was fond of. Whenever he wanted to praise a child for eating up, he invariably used the word "stroke" for appetite: "He has a great stroke." I am not sure how widespread this word is: I'd like to know.
This stroke first appeared in literature in 1699 in a book by William Dampier called A New Voyage Around The World. He wrote: "Neither can any man be entertain'd as a soldier, that has not a greater stroke than ordinary at eating." Swift had the word too; but after him, not a trace of this stroke may be found in English literature.
This is from the Dean's Polite Conversation: "Lady: God bless you, Colonel, you have a good stroke with you. Colonel: O Madam, formerly I could eat all, but now I leave nothing."
I have found the word in a 19th century dialect glossary from Northumberland: "The bairn, he's a grand stroke", meaning the child has a good appetite. Not a trace of it elsewhere. I suppose it, like all the other strokes found in English, comes from the Middle English strok, probably representing an unrecorded Old English strak. The related Dutch has streek, and modern German streich.
I heard an interesting word the other day from a Traveller, Miley Connors. He was talking horses, as usual. He wouldn't take a present of a certain Aintree-bound animal, he said, because he was an oul' strollop. A strollop, he explained, was a horse with a lazy, aimless walk in the parade ring. The word is not in any of the Irish dialect dictionaries, but I found it in glossaries from Lancashire. "A slovenly, untidy walker", says one. Wright's great dictionary also has a Lancashire verb strollop, "to stride or walk about aggressively; to go about in an untidy, slovenly manner."
But where does Miley's word originate? The dictionaries shy away.
I would guess is a fusion of trollop, ultimately from Old French troller, a hunting term, "to hunt to no purpose", and stroll, an early 17th century borrowing from the High German, introduced by soldiers; compare the German strolch, vagabond.