Buroo
The unemployment office, or by extension unemployment benefit itself. 'On the buroo' = unemployed and signing on. 'Down at the buroo' = at the employment office. Spelled buroo, bru, or brew; pronounced the same.
Etymology
From English 'bureau' (= office, agency), via the Ulster working-class pronunciation. The Labour Bureau or Employment Bureau was the formal name of the unemployment office in twentieth-century British state administration; Ulster speech shortened the vowel and softened the consonants to give 'buroo'. The three modern spellings - 'buroo', 'bru', 'brew' - all represent the same word and the same pronunciation.
In a sentence
"He's been on the buroo since the factory closed - eighteen months now, no sign of work."
Historical notes
Buroo is one of the small Ulster Scots vocabulary items where the spelling has not settled. Older speakers and writers tend to 'buroo' (the most phonetically explicit form); younger Ulster speech sometimes uses 'brew' (which can be confusing when written, since it looks like the drink). All three spellings refer to the same institution. Not to be confused with Irish 'brú' (an entirely separate word meaning pressure, push, or crowd, from Old Irish - no relation to bureau at all).
Alternate spellings
brew · bru
Sources
- Macafee, Caroline. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996. · dictionary