How To Say Bicycle In Irish

It’s time for a bitesized look at how to say bicycle in Irish!

First of all, the Irish for bicycle is rothar /ruh-her/.

This word is derived from the Irish word for wheel: roth /ruh/.

The term for a person who cycles, or cyclist, is rothaí /ruh-hee/.

The act of cycling is rothaíocht /ruh-hee-ukth/.

If, like me, you love to cycle you might say Is breá liom a bheith ag rothaíocht /Iss braw lyum a veh egg ruh-hee-ukth/. This translates, true to the idiom of Hiberno-English, as “I love to be cycling.“

Your bike chain delivers your pedal power to the sprocket and thence to the wheels. The Irish for bicycle chain is slabhra rothair /slaw-ra ruh-hirj/.

Here slabhra means chain, and rothair is our word for bike, rothar, in its genitive singular form. To learn more about the genitive case (an tuiseal ginideach) take a look at our Bitesize Irish memberships!

The Irish for brakes is coscáin /kuss-kaw-in/.

But, you might ask, how do you say “On your bike!”?

Well, we have several expressions in Irish that we use to say “begone!”, “off with you!”, or, indeed, “leave me alone!”(though none of them feature the word bicycle!).

You could say bailigh leat! /byl-ig lyath/.

.. or gread leat! /grrad lyath/.

Okay, I’m off on my bike. Slán go fóill /slawn guh foe-ill/  (bye for now).