| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| welsh, welch, Welsh (adjs., nn.), welch, welsh (v.), welcher, welsher (n.) |
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| The Welsh are the people who live in Wales, and Welsh is their language; pronounce it WELSH. Welch is an occasional variant spelling of both proper noun and adjective and reflects a variant pronunciation, WELCH. The lowercase spellings of the adjective usually refer indirectly to the people (attributing welsh or Welsh rabbit to them, for example), but the verb (usually combined with on) means “to fail to pay back a debt,” “to break one’s word,” as in She welched on her promise or That nation has welched on its war debt. Pronounce it either WELCH or WELSH. Possibly (but by no means certainly—the dictionaries say “origin unknown” or “uncertain”) the verb, which appeared first in the mid-nineteenth century, takes its meaning from an unflattering English characterization of the Welsh people, with whom the English were long at war and at odds. A welcher or welsher is someone who evades debts or doesn’t keep promises. The Welsh and people of Welsh extraction could take offense but curiously enough none of the dictionaries marks the word as an ethnic slur. Even the most recent dictionary considers this sense of the verb and noun to be Standard. See ETHNIC SLURS AND TERMS OF ETHNIC OPPROBRIUM. | 1 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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