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Sheila Definition 1: Sheila is the stage name of a French pop singer whose real name is Annie Chancel (she is not related to Jacques Chancel, the TV host). She was born on August 16, 1946 in Crteil. "Sheila" is the title of her first song. Sheila started her musical career in 1962, after being noticed by Claude Carrre, a French music producer and songwriter. This collaboration would last actively for over 20 years. It ended definitely in 1995 with a highly publicized lawsuit. Sheila had numerous and well-remembered hits in the sixties and in the seventies, playing the well-behaved young girl image. The first one was L'cole est finie (School is over), in 1962 already. In the Eight Women movie, Ludivine Sagnier sang her 1963 "Papa t'es plus dans l'coup" (Daddy, you are out of touch with reality) hit. In 1977 she came back as Sheila and B. Devotion (in some countries records were released under the name "Sheila B. Devotion") and changed her style to disco. She also started singing in English. She again enjoyed a strong success, with hits like "Spacer", "Love Me Baby" or a "Singin' In the Rain" cover. She ended the collaboration with Carrre at the beginning of the 1980s, and since that time has had problems with keeping her musical career afloat. Her 1985 show at the Znith, a large concert hall in northern Paris, was considered a failure. Although she is still very popular, she has difficulties releasing commercially viable albums. External links See Also Definition 2: Australian slang for a female. A discussion of the origins follows: In 1828 the Sydney newspaper, the Monitor, reported a street fight that had occurred in Sydney on Saint Patricks day. The report included the comment that following the fight many a piteous Shela stood wiping the gory locks of her Paddy. This is the earliest written evidence of the use of the Australian word sheila. The Oxford English Dictionary defines sheila as a young girl or young woman; a girlfriend. Playfully affectionate and predominantly in male use. The OED also includes the Irish origin of the word: It may represent a generic use of the (originally Irish) personal name Sheila, the counterpart of Paddy...in any case, it became assimilated to this at some later stage. We can detect some uncertainty in the OED commentary on the word sheila; a sense that some information does not fit, that something is missing. More recently, the author of The Dinkum Dictionary, Susan Butler, is confident that Sheila was a common female name in Ireland, used alongside the name Paddy to represent the archetypal Irish couple. From this early usage (dating from the 1820s in Britain) Sheila came to mean any female, whether Irish or not. This British use of sheila was then transported to the colonies. I suggest that the reason we have such divergent views on the origin of the Australian English word sheila is because of an etymological error made from the beginning. It is surprising that no one, apparently, has questioned these written assertions that the name Sheila is common in Ireland. It is not. Nor has the name Sheila ever been used in the generic sense of a counterpart to Paddy in Ireland. Neither was the name Sheila common in eighteenth century Australia. Between 1788 and 1828 over two thousand female convicts were transported to Australia from Irish ports. The most common name among them was Mary, followed by Ann/e, Catherine, Margaret, Elizabeth, Brigid and Sara. These, of course, are official first names. Many of these women would have used Irish names or diminutives of the English names, such as: Mire,ine, Cit, Kitty, Kathleen, Peg, Maggie, ilis, Brd, Bridie and Biddy. There were no Sheilas on board those convict ships. The Irish language name Sle is usually translated into English as Julia. There were no Julias on board these convict ships. That the word sheila as a term for a girl or girlfriend in Australian English is indisputable. That the generic nature of the name derives from the Irish female first name is disputable. If a generic name, a counterpart to Paddy, had existed at that time it would most likely have been the name Biddy, a shortened for of Brigid. This is a name that was used in America in the nineteenth century as a term for an Irish servant (see entry for biddy in the OED). Given this, the question arises as to why the name Sheila became associated with that of an Irishwoman in Australia, and later as a generic term for Australian women? Why did Australian sheila not also surface in Britain or America, places that experienced a greater number of Irish migrants at any time than Australia? These factors cast doubt on the popular belief that Aus. sheila derived from the Irish female name Sheila. The Irish language, not Irish English, provides a more satisfactory explanation for the origin of the Australian word sheila. In Ireland, the Irish language word Sle, which is always written with a capital S, is used generically in the world of nature and mythology. As applied to humans, however, it is usually a derogatory term, especially when referring to male behaviour. The following are some Irish dictionary definitions: Sle: An effeminate man. A man too fond of female society, a mollycoddle. Hes around the house like an old sheelah Sheela: Used in the South as a reproachful name for a boy or man inclined to do work or interest himself in affairs properly belonging to women. See Molly. Sle: Homaighnasach This last dictionary definition translates as homosexual. It occurs in Foclir na Collaochta, a recent Irish language dictionary of sexual terminology. The majority of the words in this dictionary do not occur in standard Irish language dictionaries. As the OED suggests, the Australian word sheila is also predominantly in male use. Furthermore G A Wilkes, in his study of Australian colloquialisms, states that no woman would refer to herself as a sheila. I suggest that this male connection is where Australian sheila is evocative of the Irish language word Sle. Both words are also pronounced the same. The use of the Australian term sheila by males towards males is not generally mentioned in dictionaries which focus on standard Australian English. Significantly, however, The Penguin Book of Australian Slang records a secondary meaning for sheila as: A man who is weak, effeminate, lacking in bravado. Here, I suggest, is a connection with the definitions discussed earlier of the Irish word Sle. It is significant that in Australia the official recognition that sheila may be used by males of males arises in a dictionary of slang words. It is likely that Ausralian sheila was originally a taboo word for a homosexual. In Ireland, the only dictionary to admit to the meaning of homosexual for the word Sle, is that recent dictionaries of sexual terminology, a work that is written entirely in the Irish language. Such words are apparently taboo in Ireland today. They are reserved for those who use the Irish language. In this they are out of reach of the majority of the population. In his book Iniskillane, a social study of family and community in the West of Ireland, Hugh Brody outlines the divide in the roles of a typical rural Irish husband and his wife in the 1970s. The daily ritual consisted of the wife rising first and preparing breakfast for her husband and the children. The husband then went to work in the fields. The couple never ate together, and in the evenings it was customary for the husband to visit neighbours or have neighbours visit him while his wife continued with the household and family work. Finally the husband went to bed before his wife. Male and female lived separate lives, in effect, due to 'a highly developed division of sexual roles'. We can presume that any noticeable crossing of this divide would have been commented upon, and in the case of a male, through the use of Irish language terminology such as cistineoir, piteog, and Sle. Diarmaid Muirithe in A Dictionary of Anglo-Irish, provides for the word cistineoir the definition: A cotquean. 'A man who spends a lot of time about the house taking an interest in women's work. For the word piteog he provides the definition: An effeminate man. 'A man who prys into things, in the household or elsewhere, that are supposedly or understood to belong entirely to the sphere of women. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Irish convicts who were transported to Australia would have experienced not only a change in landscape and climate but also a way of life that was new and no doubt alienating. Especially in those early days when there was a shortage of females, and with the nature of a convict's life in the Penal Colony, work such as washing clothes, cooking and cleaning would have fallen to the male. It may be that those who were seen to be doing this work well, or who may have taken undue interest in it would have been ridiculed for demonstrating effeminacy. It may have been in this climate that the term Sle was applied to males by males. However, given the double use of the word Sle in Ireland, to denote not just effeminacy but also homosexuality, we must conclude that the surfacing of this Irish word in Australia may have been prompted by stress following undue exposure to this way of life: A speakers ability to cope with the difficulties of language varies according to his state of mind, and it is well known that any kind of emotional stress, favourable or unfavourable tends to promote a reversion to the primary language. Many Irish-speaking convicts under the system of transportation to Australia were men from rural areas, brought up with social norms some of which were peculiar to their own small part of the world. Even before arrival in Australia, conditions on board the convict ships necessitated participation in what may have been considered women's work: cooking, cleaning, the washing of clothes and so on. However, convicts were also entering a world in which, according to Robert Hughes, homosexual activity was as utterly pervasive in the world of hulks and penal settlement as it is in modern penitentiaries. Hughes explains further that homosexuality was also the norm in Hyde Oark Barracks in Sydney; young boys especially were preyed upon by old lags. It is likely that few of these boys would have had any homosexual experience before they got to Australia. This would have been doubly traumatic for a young rural Irish Catholic boy, who lived in a society where such behaviour was not only condemned by the Church, but also denied emphatically by society. In 1832 The Molesworth Committee received testimony from the Catholic Bishop of Sydney of the extent of Homosexual activity in the Colony, and its effects on the young. The bishop quoted one particular youth as saying: Such things no one knows in Ireland. In addition, an 1847 report on Norfolk Island noted that In general, it was the English who turned to sodomy; the Irish Catholic prisoners abjured it. Whether for the purpose of condemning the activity or merely talking about it, the Irish-speaking convicts had a word for a person who took part in homosexual activity; he was a Sle. This was a word that was known and understood among the Irish convicts and could be passed on to others but yet was a secret word and so safe to use even in the hearing of authorities. The circumstances that were favourable to the utterance of and continued use of the Irish language word Sle in Australia were: the reversal of male/female domestic roles; homosexual activity of a violent nature; and strong religious beliefs. The probability that Ir. Sle meaning Homosexual is the origin for Australian sheila is further enhanced when we consider that the word sheila as a generic name for an (Irish) female did not surface in Britain nor in America, countries which experienced far greater numbers of Irish settlers than did Australia. The Australian word sheila is geographical. It reflects the nature of Australian society at that time. Finally the Australian word sheila is a word used almost exclusively by males, is always slightly derogatory when used of females, and, according to The Penguin Book of Australian Slang can also mean a man who is weak, effeminate, lacking in bravado In the underworld where slang lives, this connotation for Australian sheila more clearly reflects an origin in Ir. Sle effeminate male, homosexual, than the traditionally held origin of the Irish Christian name Sheila. The Irish language may also provide clues as to how the Australian term sheila is primarily applied to females. Most importantly, we must look to the Irish language directly as a possible source for Australian English words of unknown or uncertain origin. For too long the lure of Irish English has masked this other, more potent, source.
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