Bucklepper
An overactive, overconfident person. The kind who throws themselves around at full enthusiasm and only thinks about consequences afterwards. Often pejorative but never seriously so - a bucklepper is exhausting rather than dangerous.
Etymology
From 'buck' (= a young male) + 'lepper' (= leaper), an Ulster Scots and Hiberno-English compound describing a bouncing, energetic, possibly reckless young man. The verb 'to bucklep' (= to jump about, to throw oneself around) is the root action. Patrick Kavanagh used the word in his poetry; Seamus Heaney later picked it up and gave it literary weight.
In a sentence
"The young bucklepper had the whole field stirred up before the match even started."
Historical notes
Bucklepper is one of the small group of Hiberno-English words that survived because Irish poets needed them. Kavanagh's use - describing the kind of young rural man who could not stay still - put the word in print; Heaney's reuse kept it there. Outside literary contexts the word is now rare; in older rural Irish speech it had a clear referent (the young man who could not be calmed down). The compound shows the Hiberno-English readiness to combine standard English roots into local-flavour vocabulary.
Sources
- Kavanagh, Patrick; Heaney, Seamus - poetry attestations cited in Wikipedia HE vocabulary section. · academic