Targe
A sharp-tongued woman, often older. Heard in Ulster and Scots speech for a woman with a reputation for cutting remarks. Pejorative but with a slight admiring edge: a targe gets what she wants, even if everyone wishes she'd ask more nicely.
Etymology
From the older English noun 'targe' (= a small shield), itself from Old French 'targe'. The semantic shift from a shield to a sharp-tongued woman is documented in Scots and Ulster Scots without a clear bridge - perhaps the metaphor of a defensive shield deployed as offence, or a woman who is hard to get past.
In a sentence
"Her grandmother was an awful targe in her day - you didn't cross her twice."
Historical notes
Targe sits next to 'hesp' in the small Ulster Scots vocabulary for sharp-tongued women, with the targe slightly more admired (and slightly more feared) than the hesp. The word's ultimate origin in a Norman-French weapon is one of the small linguistic curiosities of Ulster Scots: the same root that gave the medieval shield gave the modern term for a verbally formidable woman. The female-only constraint applies; men do not get called targes.
Sources
- Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), entry TARGE n. · dictionary
- Macafee, Caroline. A Concise Ulster Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 1996. · dictionary