Dylan Thomas' wonderful poem "Fern Hill" has a lovely use of the word 'dingle'. Here's the first verse:

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

Dingle: a seaport on the shore of Dingle Bay, western County Kerry, southwest Ireland. Are there any valleys nearby? Is there a relationship?

Everyone in Ireland will probably be replying to this topic shortly, but here goes - there is a town in West Kerry, Ireland, which until recently was called Dingle, which is a corruption of the Irish place name An Daingean Ui Chuis, meaning Fort of the Husseys or Fort of the O Cuis. It is referred to as "An Daingean" on signs etc., but the name change has been hugely controversial given the dependence on tourism in the area and long established usage of "Dingle".

>>Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,<<

The West Irish countyside I remember is all in these words.
Afoot over hill and through "dingle". Blackberry hedges, ferns, wild fuchsia to both sides of the narrow cut roads. Green grass, daisies and unbelievable skies.

( And hi! Could have been in Weekly Themes )

made me think of Tom Bombadil.

There was a dingle in my mother's neighborhood in the New Hampshire countryside. It was a bit of a detour that took a bend off the main road and wound back to join it about a mile down. It was referred to as as The Dingle, as in "I'm off to take a walk around The Dingle", or "She lives off The Dingle". There was nothing narrow or deep about it that I can remember!

This morning's word Dingle certainly had me searching the archives of the Irish Times. There has been a lot in the press in the past few months about a very popular town in Kerry - Dingle - the English version Dingle - the Irish version An Daingean Ui Chuis

Yes, my first thought when seeing "dingle" was of "Fern Hill," too, perhaps Dylan Thomas's most famous poem. Go, run now, fast, find a copy, and drink it in--or just Google it--but it's far more appealing with the book in your hands. The words are palpable--like the pages their written on. Was childhood so long ago? Did you sing in your chains, like the sea?

Dingle is not only a town on the southwest coast of Ireland, but a peninsula that sits above the more famous Ring of Kerry and is a very beautiful drive indeed into the heart of the Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking Ireland).

No one has mentioned the word "dingleberry". Does anyone know what it means?

In Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada there is a park on the Northwest Arm (a small bay or inlet) that has long been know as the Dingle.

In re 'dingle berry' - many years ago now, I had a friend at work who had a jar of apple butter that he ate on toast that was kept in the common refrigerator. To keep people from 'snitching' his apple butter, he labeled it 'dingle berry' jam.

A dingle berry is a scatogical nickname, for small amounts of fecal material that adhere to hair.

I give you the dingleberry bush image. If you want the vulgar/slang meaning, go Google and wiki for yourself and you can keep it.

>> Dingleberry bush

>> Dingleberry tree

It is the truly truth.

I had to look up dingle 50 years ago when I was directing Under Milk Wood. It occurs in the very first speech "...though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles." I had no trouble with dingle, but I suspect Dylan made up "snouting."

I've also heard it used to refer to small fabric balls hanging from threads and used to ring the windshields of cars of a certain demographic back in the '70s.

scatogical

The dingle of dingleberry has been connected by some etymologists to the English word dung from PIE *dhengh- 'to press, curve, bend, cover' (Russian дуга (duga) 'arc'). The Old Irish word daingean 'strong, fast/fixed; fortress' is from a PIE homonym *dhengh- 'to accomplish; fixed' (Greek ταχυς (takhus) 'quick, fast', Russian дяга (djaga) 'leather strap'). [Pokorny IEW 250.] The sense of dingle as 'dell' is attested first in Middle English in the 13th century, which is about the time that the English placename came to be used for the Irish city. The Gaelic An Daingean Uí Chúis 'the fortress of O'Cush' has been used for about the same amount of time.

daingean 'strong, fast/fixed Is this also where we get the word dungeon?

Is this also where we get the word dungeon?

Could be: link.

Dingle means a minor car crash, here in Australia at least. I thought it might be more widespread, but the only reference I could find is from our national broadcaster. I'd be interested to know the etymology of this.

"Most crashes aren't serious, but even a minor dingle can be stressful for motorists."
from an ABC Radio National transcript
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s678210.htm

Clark Gormley
Newcastle NSW Australia

We us the word dingleberries out here. It's kind of like out in the boondocks....

Doo-dee-doo-doo...yesterday afternoon, the Travel Channel had a show on the Dingle Peninsula.

Welcome, all ye newcomers! Clark--it's about time we had another Ozzie! :-)
klaber--where is out here , please? (Just a general location, or even country, if you feel like it.)

"Out here" is Fargo...

being ex of Sunny Nodak (40 years ago), and never having heard dingleberries used that way, I hastened to google "out in the dingleberries" -- 0 gh, 2 Blogs hits, 1 Groups hit.

-joe (Fargo really is out there) friday

In Baja Manitoba.

"Out here" is Fargo... Ah, a US'n; thanks. My main association with ND is that the people from there whom I've heard speak have the same accent as the characters in the Peanuts television shows.

Just FYI, according to USGS GNIS database there are 13 populated places in the US called Fargo... Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana somehow has 2, Illinois, Michigan, New York (2 again), North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wisconsin.

well! dingleberry is the first thought i had, but with all the literary responses, and this being my first ever response, i was reluctant to mention it! i know dingleberries as balls of poop in your underwear, i guess from farting!

well! dingleberry is the first thought i had, but with all the literary responses, and this being my first ever response, i was reluctant to mention it! i know dingleberries as balls of poop in your underwear, i guess from farting!