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
A land without a people for a people without a land self-conscious national group, "a people". Historian Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote that "Shaftesbury, like the later Zionists, clearly meant by 'people' a recognizable people, a nation." Historian Gudrun Krämer writes that the phrase was a political argument that many mistakenly took to be a demographic argument. "What it meant was not that there were no people in Palestine... Rather, it meant that the people living in Palestine were not "a" people with a history, culture, and legitimate claim to national self-determination... Palestine contained people, but not "a" people". Steven Poole, in a book about the use of language as a weapon in