Sir, – Frank McNally (An Irishman’s Diary, March 15th) quotes a correspondent who asks, “How many personal surnames (eg “boycott”) make it into the English language as a verb?
What about “lynch”? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the origin of the verb, meaning “to kill someone for an alleged offence, without a legal trial, especially by hanging”, is attributed to a Capt William Lynch, head of a self-constituted judicial tribunal in Virginia circa 1780.
However, a Galway tradition attributes it to the mayor of that city, James Lynch Fitz Stephen, who had his son hanged without trial in 1493 at what is now known as Lynch’s Castle. – Yours, etc,
PÁDRAIGÍN RIGGS,
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Bishopstown,
Cork.
