I think I asked this question before but cannot remember if anyone answered.
In norniron we said " welsched " when someone did not keep his word or did not repay a loan. Recently I was discussing with a German friend mixed marriages in the German speaking part of Italy = South Tyrol. When a German married an Italian it was called a Welsch marriage and a type of wine making grape was known there as a Welsch Riesling and was wondering if their is any similarity to our use of the word. Maybe some wine or language experts out there will know.
donald

Donald,

Maybe it meant that someone had drunk too much wine while making the deal or marriage etc. In other words at the time of the deal they were incapable of sense & got a fools pardon.???

Pat

I always thought the word was WELCH..no s??

Pat,
it´s a possible explanation, another is it originated in the Celtic language and was taken over in the local dialect as was a lot of our dialect.

llewellyn
that is also possible but to achieve the pronunciation as we used it you need the "s"
donald