after - From Ulster to America
Source: From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English
Author: Michael Montgomery
Comments: From Ulster to America recounts the lasting impact eighteenth-century settlers from Ulster have made on the development of the English language of the United States. The book documents over 500 vocabulary items contributed to American English by these ‘Scotch-Irish’ settlers. Each ‘shared’ term with its meaning is authenticated by quotations from both sides of the Atlantic. This searchable online version of his book takes its text from the dictionary part of the second edition published by the Ullans Press in 2017.
after prep (in phrase be after + verb + -ing to express an action just completed (thus I’m after eating = I have just eaten). [based on a pattern in Irish (for details, see 1998 Dolan Dict Hiberno-English 3-4); this construction rarely, if ever, survived beyond the speech of emigrants in the U.S., but it is still found in Newfoundland, cf dne s.v. after prep)]
Ulst.:
1845 Carleton Irish Peasantry 125 ‘I’ll warrant’, observed Katty, ‘we’ll soon be after seein’ John O’Callaghan … sthrolling afther them, at his ase’.
c1910 Byers Glossary = when used with a progressive tense indicates … completed action: ‘I am after telling him’ = I have just told him.
1955 Murphy Culprit of Shadows 8 Isn’t that what I’m after saying?
1993 Montgomery Barnish 63 ‘I’m only after doing it’ = I have just done that.
U.S.:
1815 Brackenridge Modern Chivalry 104 Teague gave his account of the matter; adding, if he had had a shillelah, he ‘would have been after making him know dat the paple in dis country, could curry a horse, or a cow, or a sheep, as well as any Englishman in de world’.
