{"id":17516,"date":"2019-02-19T18:08:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T18:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=17516"},"modified":"2019-02-19T18:08:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T18:08:00","slug":"a-slew-of-servants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=17516","title":{"rendered":"A Slew of Servants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When putting together a post on my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/celtiadur\/2019\/02\/19\/troop-host-throng\/\">Celtiadur<\/a> today, I discovered that the English word <strong>slew<\/strong> (a large amount) is related to words in Celtic languages for troop, army, host or throng, and to words for servant in Slavic languages.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Slew<\/strong> was in fact borrowed from Irish &#8211; from the word <em>slua<\/em> (host, force, army; crowd, multitude, throng), from the Old Irish <em>sl\u00faag \/ sl\u00f3g<\/em> (army, host; throng, crowd, company, assembly), from Proto-Celtic <em>*slougos<\/em> (troop, army), from the Proto-Indo-European <em>*slowg\u02b0os \/ *slowgos<\/em> (entourage).<\/p>\n<p><a data-flickr-embed=\"true\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/omniglot\/27502696160\/in\/photolist-JgTgFh-HUjwSW-Jdk4H6-HUjvNS-HUjvoy-JcULSv-JguHVY-JjtqcV-HouH7X-JgTeVJ-HoQuGN-Hoq1MN-HTVd5m-JaAeZs-HonuhU-Jjqf8T-HTqt7U-HotQCR\" title=\"Manchester Day Parade\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm8.staticflickr.com\/7438\/27502696160_6851f09106_z.jpg\" alt=\"Manchester Day Parade\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\"\/><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>There are similar words in the other Celtic languages, including <em>llu<\/em> in Welsh, which means host, multitude, throng, crowd, flock, army, or regiment, and appears in the Welsh word for police: <em>heddlu<\/em> (<em>hedd<\/em> = peace).<\/p>\n<p>In Manx the equivalent is <em>sleih<\/em>, which is the general word for people, and also means public, family, relations, inhabitants, crowd or populace.<\/p>\n<p>Words for servant in Slavic languages, such as <em>sluha<\/em> in Czech and Slovak, <em>s\u0142uga<\/em> in Polish, and <em>\u0441\u043b\u0443\u0433\u0430<\/em> (sluga) in Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Macedonian, all come from the same root, via the the Proto-Slavic word <em>sluga<\/em> (servant).<\/p>\n<p>Another English word that comes from the same root is <strong>slogan<\/strong>, from the Scottish Gaelic <em>sluagh-ghairm<\/em> (battle cry), from the Old Irish <em>sl\u00faag \/ sl\u00f3g<\/em> (army) and <em>gairm<\/em> (a call, cry) [<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/slogan#English\">source<\/a>].<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources<\/strong>: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/Reconstruction:Proto-Celtic\/slougos\">Wiktionary<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mannin.info\/Mannin\/fockleyr\/m2e.php\">On-Line Manx Dictionary<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/geiriadur.ac.uk\/gpc\/gpc.html\">Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When putting together a post on my Celtiadur today, I discovered that the English word slew (a large amount) is related to words in Celtic languages for troop, army, host or throng, and to words for servant in Slavic languages. Slew was in fact borrowed from Irish &#8211; from the word slua (host, force, army; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93,99,104,107,127,10,23,35,39,43,45,52,57,60,75,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bulgarian","category-czech","category-english","category-etymology","category-irish","category-language","category-manx","category-old-irish-goidelc","category-polish","category-proto-celtic","category-proto-indo-european","category-russian","category-serbian","category-slovak","category-ukrainian","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17516","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=17516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}