Shamrock Shamrock A shamrock is a young sprig, used as a symbol of Ireland. Saint Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, is said to have used it as a metaphor for the Christian Holy Trinity. The name "shamrock" comes from Irish , which is the diminutive of the Irish word for plant () and means simply "little plant" or "young plant". "Shamrock" usually refers to either the species (lesser clover, Irish: ) or (white clover, Irish: ). However, other three-leaved plants—such as , , and —are sometimes called shamrocks. The shamrock was traditionally used for its medicinal properties and was a popular motif
What Is to Be Done? belonged to this bourgeois intelligentsia. Lars T. Lih, a McGill University course lecturer, has suggested that Lenin's pamphlet has been widely misinterpreted partly by mistranslations of key terms used by Lenin. Lih says that those historians and textbooks that misinterpret the pamphlet follow "three mutually reinforcing strands": Lih argues that "even if we examine the controversial passages in "What is to be Done?" we misunderstand them if we are not alive to the meanings of the words used. Some of these have been translated in such a way as to confuse or even to draw readers to the opposite of