doaisféna

Old Irish

Etymology

Prefixed with to- +‎ ess-. Related to as·féna (“to swear, testify, attest to”). Their base ·féna is from Proto-Celtic *wetnati, from Proto-Indo-European *weth₂- (“to say”).

Verb

do·aisféna (prototonic ·taisféna, verbal noun taisbénad)

1. to show, exhibit
   • c. 800, Würzburg Glosses on the Pauline Epistles, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 499–712, Wb. 18^d7

     .i. narraui eis .i. do·airfenus doib dús imbed comrorcon and et ni robe.

     narravi eis, i.e. I reported it to them to see if by chance there might be error within, and there wasn't any.

Inflection

Complex, class A I present, s preterite, a subjunctive

		1st sg.	2nd sg.	3rd sg.	1st pl.	2nd pl.	3rd pl.	Passive sg.	Passive pl.
Present indicative	Deut.
	Prot.							·taisfentar
Imperfect indicative	Deut.
	Prot.
Preterite	Deut.
	Prot.
Perfect	Deut.	do·airfenus		dos·airfen (with infixed pronoun s-)
	Prot.			·tarfen
Future	Deut.
	Prot.
Conditional	Deut.
	Prot.
Present subjunctive	Deut.			do·aisbena; do·airfena (ro-form)
	Prot.			·taisfena
Past subjunctive	Deut.
	Prot.
Imperative								taisfentar
Verbal noun		taisbénad
Past participle
Verbal of necessity

Descendants

• Middle Irish: taisbénaid, taispénaid
  • Irish: taispeáin
  • Scottish Gaelic: taisbean
  • Manx: taishbyn

Mutation

Old Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Nasalization
do·aisféna (pronounced with /h/ in h-prothesis environments)	unchanged	do·n-aisféna
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Further reading

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “doaisféna”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
• Pedersen, Holger (1913) Vergleichende Grammatik der keltischen Sprachen (in German), volume II, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, →ISBN, § 720, page 517