Chiseler
A child, especially in Dublin inner-city speech. Equivalent in everyday use to 'kid' or 'wean' but specifically Dublin in origin and register. Often affectionate; rarely formal.
Etymology
From English 'chisel' plus the agent-noun suffix '-er'. The semantic shift is not fully settled. One reading: a chiseler is small and pointy, like a chisel. Another: chiselers are cheeky small operators who 'chisel' (= cheat, work corners). The Dublin sense is distinct from the standard English 'chiseler' meaning a swindler. James Joyce used the Dublin sense in _Ulysses_ (1922): 'the young chiseller suddenly got loose and over the wall with him into the Liffey.'
In a sentence
the young chiseller suddenly got loose and over the wall with him into the Liffey - James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922
Historical notes
Chiseler is the Dublin equivalent of Ulster's 'wean' or Hiberno-English's 'gasun': the everyday word for a child in working-class urban speech. The word has stayed working-class and stayed Dublin; it has not travelled to the same extent as 'wean' or 'kid'. Joyce's _Ulysses_ attestation is its most-cited literary moment but by no means its only one: chiseler still appears in modern Dublin fiction and journalism without need for translation.
Alternate spellings
chiseller
Sources
- Oxford English Dictionary, entry chiseler n. (Hiberno-English sense). · dictionary
- Joyce, James. Ulysses (1922). · academic