sabbait

Old Irish

Etymology

From Latin sabbatum, from Ancient Greek σάββατον (sábbaton), from Biblical Hebrew שַׁבָּת (šabbāṯ).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈsabidʲ/? /ˈsabaːdʲ/?

It is unclear whether the second syllable has a short vowel or a long one. Etymologically, a short vowel is expected as Latin sabbatum has a short vowel, and the word is never written with a long mark in Old Irish. On the other hand, long marks are often omitted in Old Irish manuscripts, and the word became sabbóit with a long /oː/ in Middle Irish, and the Old Irish plural sapati is more likely to be a spelling of /ˈsabaːdʲi/ than of /ˈsabidʲi/. (Old Irish phonotactics preclude */ˈsabadʲi/ with unstressed short /a/ before a palatalized consonant.)

Noun

sabbait f (genitive sabbait, nominative plural sapati)

1. (Judaism) Sabbath
   • 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. 27^a24

     Nachib·mided .i. nachib·berar i smachtu rechta fetarlicce, inna ndig et a mbíad, inna llíthu et a ssapati, act bad foirbthe far n‑iress.

     Let him not judge you, i.e. do not be borne into the institutions of the Law of the Old Testament, into their drink and their food, into their festivals and their sabbaths; but let your faith be perfect.

Declension

Uninflected in the singular; the plural sapati is attested as the accusative but is presumably the same in the nominative and vocative.

Descendants

• Middle Irish: sabbóit, sapóit
  • Irish: Sabóid
  • Manx: sabbad
  • Scottish Gaelic: sàbaid, sàboind

Mutation

Old Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Nasalization
sabbaid	ṡabbaid	unchanged
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), “sabbait”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language