2. Belonging to, characteristic of, or constituting another and very different place, society, or person; strange. See Synonyms at foreign. 3. Dissimilar, inconsistent, or opposed, as in nature: emotions alien to her temperament.
n, pl -thens or -then. 1. (Alternative Belief Systems) a person who does not acknowledge the God of Christianity, Judaism, or Islam; pagan. 2. an uncivilized or barbaric person. 3. (Alternative Belief Systems) the heathen (functioning as plural) heathens collectively.
Or shanty Irish might be those fellow Irish who at the turn of the century still lived in slums and were poor, hard-drinking, and contentious. Usage notes . Applied to poor Irish immigrants, from the mid-1800s. Verb . shanty (third-person singular simple present shanties, present participle shantying, simple past and past participle shantied)