Old Irish edit

Etymology edit

Contains the prefix in-. It is one of the very few verbal nouns in Old Irish that are formed by suffixing the ā-stem endings to the verb root, the other ones being ét (getting) and the verbal nouns of the compounds of sernaid. Usually root-based verbal nouns are formed as neuter o-stems (and masculine o-stems for W2b verbs).

Noun edit

esnaid f

  1. verbal noun of in·snaid: insertion
    • c. 775, “Táin Bó Fraích”, in Book of Leinster; republished as Ernst Windisch, editor, Táin bó Fraích, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1974, line 36:
      Scéith co fethul chondúala la cech n-áe, co círbachlaib, co n-esnadaib crédumai íarna tóebaib.
      Shields with engraved emblems with crested staves, with [insertions] of bronze along their sides with each of them []
    • 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. 5b42
      .i. cosmulius, tra do·mbeir-som híc, aris bésad leu-som in fid do thóbu et fid aile do esnid and.
      i.e. a similitude, then, which he puts here, for they have a custom to cut a tree and to insert another tree therein.

Inflection edit

The ā-stem declension is guaranteed by the dative plural esnadaib. If it were an i-stem, this dative plural would have been *esnaidib.

Feminine ā-stem
Singular Dual Plural
Nominative esnaidL esnaidL esnadaH
Vocative esnaidL esnaidL esnadaH
Accusative esnaidN esnaidL esnadaH
Genitive esnaideH esnaidL esnaidN
Dative esnaidL esnadaib esnadaib
Initial mutations of a following adjective:
  • H = triggers aspiration
  • L = triggers lenition
  • N = triggers nasalization

Mutation edit

Old Irish mutation
Radical Lenition Nasalization
esnaid unchanged n-esnaid
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every
possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Further reading edit