tanist

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English

Etymology

From Irish tánaiste (“second-in-command”). Doublet of Tánaiste.

Pronunciation

Noun

tanist (plural tanists)

  1. (historical) The heir presumptive to the chieftainship or kingship of a Celtic clan in ancient Ireland, Scotland or Mann.
    • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:
      Lover, for her love he prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog.
    • 2007, Mark Wycliffe Samuel, Kate Hamlyn, Blarney Castle: Its History, Development, and Purpose, Cork University Press, page 36:
      In 1570 Dermot died at 'his own house' of Castle Inch. His brother and tanist, Cormac Mac Teige (fourteenth Lord), succeeded him (Ó Murchadha, p. 16).
    • 2014, Ulla Secher, Aboriginal Customary Law: A Source of Common Law Title to Land‎, Bloomsbury Publishing (Hart Publishing), page 120:
      As a result of the universal introduction of the English common law, therefore, the original tanist acquired a common law title to the disputed land 'without grant or confirmation of the conqueror'.

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