esnaid

Old Irish

Etymology

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

esnaid f

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. 5^b42
  .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

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	esnaid^L	esnaid^L	esnada^H
vocative	esnaid^L	esnaid^L	esnada^H
accusative	esnaid^N	esnaid^L	esnada^H
genitive	esnaide^H	esnaid^L	esnaid^N
dative	esnaid^L	esnadaib	esnadaib

Initial mutations of a following adjective:

^H = triggers aspiration
^L = triggers lenition
^N = triggers nasalization

Mutation

Mutation of *esnaid*
radical	lenition	nasalization
esnaid (pronounced with /h/ in h-prothesis environments)	unchanged	n-esnaid

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

Old Irish

Etymology

Noun

Inflection

Mutation

Further reading