![\"Welsh](\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/gwlau.jpg\")
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The other day I noticed the word gwlau<\/strong> on a sign outside a furniture shop. It’s a Welsh word I hadn’t seen or heard before, but from the context I worked out that it meant ‘beds’. The sign also included the words gwlau soffa<\/strong> (sofa beds). As I hadn’t come across this plural form of gwely<\/strong> [\u02c8\u0261w\u025bl\u0268\/\u02c8\u0261we\u02d0li] (bed) before, I wondered if it was a mistake.<\/p>\n According to Geiriadur yr Academi<\/em><\/a> and Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru<\/em><\/a>, the plural forms of gwely<\/strong> are gwelyau<\/strong> or gwl\u00e2u<\/strong>, so the words on the sign weren’t wrong, but were just missing a to bach<\/em> (circumflex) on the a.<\/p>\n Gwely comes from the Proto-Celtic *u\u0278o-legyom<\/em> from *legh<\/em> (to lie down), from the Proto-Indo-European *upo (under, below) & *leg\u02b0-<\/em> \u200e(to lie (down)), and is cognate with the Cornish guely<\/em> and the Breton gwele<\/em>. *leg\u02b0-<\/em> is the root of the Irish luigh<\/em>, the Manx lhie<\/em>, and the Scottish Gaelic laigh<\/em> (to lie (down)); and also the Italian letto<\/em> and French lit<\/em> (bed), via the Latin lectus<\/em> (bed); the English lair, the German Lager<\/em> (store, camp), and the Swedish l\u00e4ger<\/em> (camp), as well as other words [source<\/a>]. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day I noticed the word gwlau on a sign outside a furniture shop. It’s a Welsh word I hadn’t seen or heard before, but from the context I worked out that it meant ‘beds’. The sign also included the words gwlau soffa (sofa beds). As I hadn’t come across this plural form of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,107,10,45,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-etymology","category-language","category-proto-indo-european","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}