aillse

Irish edit

From Old Irish aillsiu (“cancer”).

aillse f (genitive singular aillse, nominative plural aillsí)

aillse

A number of Irish dictionaries (beginning in the 1700s by confusing several different Irish and Scottish Gaelic words, and spreading by copying) listed "fairy" and "delay, heedlessness, neglect" as other meanings of this word, but they are ghost senses and do not exist.^[1]

Irish mutation
Radical	Eclipsis	with h-prothesis	with t-prothesis
aillse	n-aillse	haillse	not applicable
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

^ an article in Scottish Gaelic Studies 3-4 (1929), page 54, says: "Aillse, "a fairy," appears first in Lhuyd (p. 426), who marks it as a Scottish word. The next lexicographer to include it was Shaw, who explains it as "a fairy, a diminutive creature." O'Reilly, as usual, took over the word from Shaw. Coneys copied O'Reilly, at the same time providing the word with a plural, aillseacha, and quoting the phrase, Ni lugha orm aillseacha ciaróg 'na thu. He thus mixed up two distinct words, the Scottish aillse, and the Irish aillseach, 'a chafer, ear-wig'."

From Old Irish aillsiu (“sore, tumour, abscess”).

aillse f (genitive singular aillse)

Scottish Gaelic mutation
Radical	Eclipsis	with h-prothesis	with t-prothesis
aillse	n-aillse	h-aillse	t-aillse
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Edward Dwelly (1911) “aillse”, in Faclair Gàidhlig gu Beurla le Dealbhan [The Illustrated Gaelic–English Dictionary]‎^[1], 10th edition, Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited, →ISBN
G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “aillsiu”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language