Meaning
In Irish English, rashers commonly means slices of bacon, especially the bacon served in a cooked breakfast, sandwich, roll, or other everyday meal.
How it is used
Cambridge defines a rasher as a thin flat piece of bacon, while Collins labels rasher of bacon British and contrasts it with American slice. Foras na Gaeilge records bacon rashers directly. Irish Times food writing uses rashers naturally and repeatedly in discussion of the full Irish breakfast and Irish bacon culture.
Examples
- “The breakfast came with two rashers and two sausages.”
- “She put rashers in the frying pan.”
- “I ordered a rasher sandwich and tea.”
Pronunciation
/ˈræʃ.ərz/ · RASH-erz
Tone and register
Neutral and ordinary in Irish food conversation. Rashers is not uniquely Irish, so Maperla records Irish salience without relabeling a wider British-and-Irish term as exclusive national slang.
Visitor guidance
Visitors can understand one rasher as one slice of bacon and rashers as multiple slices. The term does not by itself specify back bacon, streaky bacon, smoking, cure, thickness, meat origin, cooking method, or dietary suitability.
Cultural context
Rashers are particularly visible in Irish breakfast vocabulary, which makes the term useful for cafés, hotels, menus, grocery shopping, family meals, and breakfast rolls. The cultural connection is strong even though the underlying word has a wider English history beyond Ireland.
Places represented
Open the reviewed place guide for each regional sense carried by this canonical entry.