In the Dark

I noticed the following phrasing in the media in connection with the departure of Philip Nolan from his position at Science Foundation Ireland, e.g.

On foot of the investigation, the board of SFI wrote to the five senior staff members with the findings.

Irish Independent, 29th May 2024

The use of the idiomatic phrase “on foot of” (meaning “as a result of” or “following”, etc, as distinct from “on foot”, meaning “by walking”) seems quite commonplace in Hiberno-English, even in judicial proceedings, but I’ve never encountered it at all outside Ireland. This gives me an excuse to direct your attention to this post from elsewhere about this very matter from which I stole the title of this short post. I suspect the phrase in question may be formed by direct translation from a construction in the Irish language, which would explain why it isn’t used outside Ireland, but I’m happy to be corrected if wrong…

This entry was posted on May 29, 2024 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Irish Language, Science Politics with tags Hiberno-English, On foot of. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.