Scarlet
Acutely embarrassed; mortified - on one's own behalf or, distinctively, on someone else's. Where standard English uses 'scarlet with shame' as a stage direction, Hiberno-English drops the prepositional phrase and lets the colour do the whole job.
Etymology
From Old French 'escarlate', from Medieval Latin 'scarlata' - originally a rich woollen cloth, often but not always dyed red. The colour sense took over from the 14th century. The metaphorical 'red in the face with shame' use is in standard English from at least the 16th century. What Hiberno-English does is preserve the bare predicative form. Where the rest of the language now reaches for 'embarrassed' or 'mortified', Hiberno-English keeps the colour itself as the descriptor.
In a sentence
I was pure scarlet when she said it in front of his mother. - a domestic mortification
Scarlet for ye, mate - that joke was not the one. - a friend's verdict
Historical notes
The most distinctive use is the vicarious 'scarlet for ye' - mortified on another person's behalf. The construction goes further than English 'embarrassed for him' because it puts the speaker into the colour, not the subject. Watching a teenager perform badly at a wedding, an Irish parent might whisper 'I'm scarlet for her' and feel it as an inherited burn. The form is now well enough established to feature in mainstream dictionary coverage of recent Hiberno-English additions.
Sources
- Oxford English Dictionary, entry scarlet adj. (sense: red in the face from shame or embarrassment). · dictionary
- Hickey, Raymond. Irish English: History and Present-Day Forms. Cambridge University Press, 2007. · academic
- Carey, Stan. Sentence First (commentary on Hiberno-English predicative constructions). · other