ailid

Old Irish

Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *aleti, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂életi. Cognate with Middle Welsh alu (“bear young”), Latin alō (“I feed, nourish”), Old English alan (“to nourish”).

The future stem has eb- extracted from reduplicated futures like ebarthi (“will grant it”) (from Proto-Celtic *ɸiɸrāti) and ·ebla¹ (“will drive”) (from Proto-Celtic *ɸiɸlāti) and reinterpreted as a future marker.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈalʲiðʲ]

Verb

ailid (conjunct ·ail, verbal noun altram)

1. to nourish
   • 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. 5^b28

     is inse ṅduit; ní tú nod·n-ail, acht is hé not·ail.

     it is impossible for you sg; it is not you that nourishes it, but it that nourishes you

2. to rear, foster

Conjugation

Simple, class B I present, t preterite, a future, a subjunctive

		1st sg	2nd sg	3rd sg	1st pl	2nd pl	3rd pl	passive sg	passive pl
present indicative	abs.						ailit	ailtir
	conj.			·ail				·alar
	rel.			ailes			ailte
imperfect indicative
preterite	abs.			alt				altae
	conj.			·alt	·altammar		·altatar	·alt
	rel.			altae
perfect	deut.		ro·n-ailt (nasalized relative)
	prot.
future	abs.							ebeltair
	conj.			·ebla, ·ebela
	rel.
conditional				·ebelad				·ebeltae
present subjunctive	abs.
	conj.
	rel.
past subjunctive					·almais
imperative
verbal noun		altram
past participle		ailte, altae
verbal of necessity

Descendants

• Irish: oil
• Scottish Gaelic: oil

Mutation

Mutation of ailid

radical	lenition	nasalization
ailid (pronounced with /h/ in h-prothesis environments)	unchanged	n-ailid

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in Old Irish.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

Further reading

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “ailid”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language