Spòg

By Simon

I came across the Scottish Gaelic word spòg (foot) in a song I learnt today and it caught my attention because I heard it a couple of weeks ago when I was in Ireland being used to mean foot in English. I thought it might be a Irish word, but didn’t get round to checking.

In Scottish Gaelic spòg /sbɔːg/ means claw, talon, hand, radius, spoke, paw or leg. It is also used for the hands of a clock: spòg an uaireadair.

I can’t find spog in any of the Irish dictionaries I’ve checked, so maybe it’s a word used in Hiberno-English, but which is no longer used in Irish. The usual word for foot in Irish is cos, which also means leg.

Have any of you come across the word spog before?

Menhirs, dolmens and cromlechs

By Simon

A menhir from Brittany and a cromleac from Ireland

The word menhir come up in discussion yesterday and I posted it on Facebook today along with the the Welsh translation maen hir, which is what I found in this dictionary. This provoked further discussion about whether the two terms mean the same thing. So I thought I’d find out.

A menhir is a standing stone of the kind that Obelix delivers in the Asterix books. According to the Dictionary of Word Origins and the OED, menhir comes from Breton mean-hir (long stone), which is what the Welsh term maen hir means, so it seems that they are the same. The usual Breton word for such standing stones is peulvan, however.

The word dolmen (a prehistoric structure of two or more upright stones surmounted by a horizontal one), comes via French from Breton: the men part means stone, and the dol part either comes from the Breton word tōl (table), a borrowing from the Latin tabula (board, plank), or from the Cornish tol (hole). So dolmen either means ‘stone table’ or ‘stone hole’.

The word dolmen also exists in Welsh, and another word for such structures is cromlech, which exists in Welsh and English and comes from the Welsh words crwm (bent, stooped) and llech (stone), and is related to the Irish word cromleac (‘bent stone’).

Les mots de la semaine

By Simon

– mégalithe (m) = megalith = megalith / maen mawr
– menhir (m) = standing stone = maen hir
– dolmen (m) = dolmen = dolmen / cromlech
– tombe (f) tombeau (m) = tomb = bedd
– faire dévier de son sujet / distraire / dérouter = to sidetrack = gwrthdynnu / troi o’r neilltu
– s’écarter de son sujet = to get sidetracked
– en liquide = in cash = ym mhres / yn arian parod
– payer comptant = to pay cash = talu drwy/ag arian parod
– petite caisse = petty cash = arian pitw/mân
– argent liquide = ready cash = arian/pres parod
– monnaie (f) = change = newid (?)
– guérir = to cure (illness, problem, habit) = iacháu / gwella
– remède (m) = a cure = iachâd / gwellhad
– agent secret = secret agent = asiant cudd
– sous contrôle = under control = dan rheolaeth
– c’est une honte! = it’s a disgrace! = mae’n waradwydd!
– grange (f) = barn = ysgubor
– injection (f) piqûre (f) = injection = pigiad

Cars, carts and chariots

By Simon

Last week I was told that the English word car originally comes from the Irish word carr (donkey cart). Apparently when cars came to Ireland Irish speakers thought it was better to come up with a new word for them than to name them after the humble donkey cart, so the term gluaisteán (‘moving thing’) was coined. I hadn’t heard about this before so thought I’d check it.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary the English word car has been used to refer to a wheeled vehicle since 1300 and comes from the Old Northern French word carre, from the Latin carrum/carrus, which originally referred to a two-wheeled Celtic war chariot, from the Gaulish word karros, from the Proto-Indo-European word *krsos, from the root *kers- (to run).

There are related words in Welsh carr (cart, wagon), and in Breton: karr (chariot, cart), in Cornish: karr (car), in Manx: carr (car), in Spanish and Italian: carro (cart, wagon) and probably in other languages.

The word chariot comes from the same root as car, but cart probably comes from the Old Norse word kart-r (cart), according to the OED.

Another vehicle-related word we discussed last week is carbad (chariot), from the Old Irish carpat (war-chariot, waggon). It is related to the Welsh cerbyd (vehicle, car, carriage, coach), the Old Breton cerpit, the Gaulish carpentoracte, from the Latin corbis (basket), from carpentum (two wheeled chariot), which was probably borrowed from Gaulish. The root idea is ‘wicker’, referring to the basket character of the body of these chariots.

Counting rhymes

By Simon

We learnt this Irish counting rhyme in class today:

Lúrabóg lárabóg
Ladhra buithe
Buíeán Eoghain
Eoghean an Phreabáin
Preabán suilí
Súilí saic

The first two words are made up nonsense words, the others mean something like, “yellow toes, Eoghain’s egg yolk, Jack-in-the-Box, ??, eyelets of a sack”.

There are quite a few other rhymes like this in Irish. Do any of you know them, or counting rhymes in other languages?

One I know in English is:

Eenie, meenie, minie, mo.
Catch a tigger by his toe.
If he squeals, let him go.
Eenie, meenie, minie, mo.

I haven’t seen it written down before and I’m sure there are different ways to spell the words, and different versions of this rhyme. A Latin version was discussed in class, but unfortunately I didn’t write it down.

There are various theories about the origin is rhymes like this, but as most of them have been passed on from generation to generation of children with each generation changing them, we cannot be sure where they originally came from.

Deiseal agus tuathal

By Simon

Yesterday we discussed the Irish words deiseal (/ˈdʲɛʃəl/) and tuathal (/’tuəhəl/) in class. Deiseal means clockwise, dextral, right-hand, rightward, starboard, and tuathal means the opposite: anticlockwise, sinistral left-hand, leftward, port.

Some examples of usage:
– bogadh ar deiseal = to go in a clockwise direction
– dul deiseal = to go in a rightward direction
– fad is a bheas grian ag dul deiseal = whilst the sun follows its course
– ag bogadh ar tuathal = going in an anticlockwise direction
– cúl tuathail = own goal

They are related to the course of the sun, and date back to a time when the sun was thought to move around the earth from east to west. The course of the sun was considered the correct, right and good direction or deiseal, while the opposite direction tuathal was considered the wrong and bad direction. Buildings were built facing towards the rising sun, and adhering to these directions was thought to bring luck and prosperity.

The word deasil also exists in English, though isn’t commonly used. The opposite is widdershins or withershins.

Deiseal comes from the Old Irish word dessel, which means ‘direction of the sun, right-hand course, and comes from dess (right) and sel (turn).

Tuathal comes from the Old Irish word túaithbel, which means ‘a turning lefthandwise, against the sun, withershins’ and is a combination of túath (northern; left, on the left; perverse, wicked, evil) and sel (turn).

Source: Early Irish History and Mythology, T. F. O’Rahilly, via Wiktionary, and eDIL.

Do other languages have words for directions with similar roots?