Daniel Cassidy

Daniel Cassidy (1943 Brooklyn – October 11, 2008) was a controversial American writer. He was also a filmmaker, musician, and academic.

Cassidy was the son of a navy chief petty officer. He graduated from New York Military Academy on a full scholarship and attended Cornell University but never graduated.

Cassidy worked for the New York Times as a news assistant. He was a professional musician, starting as a reed player, and cutting an album as a singer and composer. He played Carnegie Hall, the Civic Auditorium, and The Tonight Show – performing with comedian George Carlin,Kenny Rankin, and Lilly Tomlin.

Cassidy married Clare McIntyre, in 1983. In 1995, he founded and co-directed the Irish Studies program at New College of California.

His work appeared in the The San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Observer and the Atlantic Monthly.

Cassidy died of pancreatic cancer at his home in San Francisco.

Cassidy's book is one of those eureka moments that leap beyond the ordinary to give us a new understanding of the subject at hand.

So utterly, completely stupid, only a total nincompoop like Cassidy could have come up with it.

… the problem with the book is that there is no scholarship or real evidence at all in it.

Tá Cassidy imithe ar shlí na fírinne anois, is é mo mhórdhóchas ná go n-imeoidh na bréaga seo leis. Ná ceannaigh an leabhar seo is ná tacaigh le seafóid mar seo. (Cassidy has passed away now, it is my fervent hope that these lies will pass away with him. Do not buy this book and do not support nonsense like this.)

Cassidy’s main thesis—that there are far more English words of Irish origin than are acknowledged in volumes such as the OED, and that this is due to the fact that much of the Irish influence is found among lower-status, colloquial slang expressions—is very convincing, but the etymologies he proposes for individual words would require a substantial amount of research before they could be taken as fact.

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