Welcome to the Historical Irish Corpus.

You can search here for words and phrases in a range of over 3000 texts published in Irish between 1600 and 1926. Search results can be selected and words and phrases can be read in the context in which they were originally written.

Which type of search?

A Headword search will return results based on a lemma, and these will include all forms of that word eg. a search for bád will return bád but also bhád, bhádaibh, mbáid, báduighe, báidín, droch-bhád and many other forms, through that single lemma search. The ‘word type’ (part of speech) can also be set, if desired.

A Standard search will return results based on a standardised search-term eg. a search for déanann will return déanann but also deunann, do ghní, do ghnídh etc.

An Exact Match search will return results which match exactly the search-term entered.

*NEW* A Phrase search can be conducted for phrases or strings in the corpus and works similarly to the exact match function. It should be noted that spaces, including at the beginning of the search term will be counted as characters. You can read more about the ‘phrase search’ function here.

Contact us

Please contact us at fng@ria.ie if you would like to find out more about the corpus or the Historical Dictionary Project, or if you have comments and feedback on the site.