fíacail
See also: fiacail
Old Irish
Etymology
Unknown. Michael Weiss has expressed a complete lack of faith that any satisfactory etymology can be found: "No etymology worth its salt."[1]
Discredited etymologies
- An ancient etymology derives it from Latin fīgō (“to fix”), the idea being that a tooth is a "mouth fixture";[2] this explanation is impossible on phonological grounds and extremely unlikely on semantic ones.
- MacBain suggests a connection with Middle Irish fec (“spade, tooth, tusk”),[3] assuming that the latter is actually *féc; the two would then both be from Proto-Celtic *weikkā of unknown origin.[4] This etymology is also phonetically impossible because Proto-Celtic *ei should have changed to ía before an unpalatalized consonant, so Middle Irish fec cannot have been **féc in the first place.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): [ˈɸʲiːa̯kɨlʲ]
Noun
fíacail m or f (genitive fíacla or fíaclu, nominative plural fíaclai)
- tooth
- c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 56d4
- húa détnaig a fíaclae fri alailiu
- by the gnashing of their teeth against each other
- c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 56d4
Inflection
| singular | dual | plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| nominative | fíacail | fíacailL | fíaclaiH |
| vocative | fíacail | fíacailL | fíaclaiH |
| accusative | fíacailN | fíacailL | fíaclaiH |
| genitive | fíacloH, fíaclaH | fíacloH, fíaclaH | fíaclaeN |
| dative | fíacailL | fíaclaib | fíaclaib |
Initial mutations of a following adjective:
- H = triggers aspiration
- L = triggers lenition
- N = triggers nasalization
Derived terms
- clárḟíacail (“incisor”)
- fíacail fostóigh (“canine tooth”)
Descendants
Mutation
| radical | lenition | nasalization |
|---|---|---|
| fíacail | ḟíacail | fíacail pronounced with /β̃ʲ-/ |
Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in Old Irish.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.
References
- ^ Weiss, Michael (2012) “Interesting i-stems in Irish”, in Adam I. Cooper, Jeremy Rau and Michael Weiss, editors, Multi Nominis Grammaticus: Studies in Classical and Indo-European linguistics in honor of Alan J. Nussbaum on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday, Ann Arbor, New York: Beech Stave Press, page 346
- ^ Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “fíacail”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
- ^ Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “fec”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
- ^ MacBain, Alexander, Mackay, Eneas (1911) “fíacail”, in An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language[1], Stirling, →ISBN, page 172