indéin

Old Irish

Etymology

Stokes reconstructs Proto-Celtic *andebnis, from *ande- + the root of benaid (“to strike”). However, modern scholarship holds that benaid comes from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyh₂- (“to strike, hit”) and that the n is part of the present suffix, not part of the root. On the other hand, Stokes’ etymology of benaid lists Sanskrit हन्ति (hanti, “to strike, smite”) and Ancient Greek θείνω (theínō, “to strike, wound”) as cognates, meaning he associated it with Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰen- (“to strike, kill”) (the source of gonaid (“to wound”)). It is thus possible to reconstruct Proto-Celtic *andegʷnis as the source of this as well as the Brythonic cognates (Old Welsh ennian, Welsh einion; Old Cornish ennian, Cornish anwan; Middle Breton anneffn, Breton annev).

The form *andegʷnis is expected to give *indéoin, and that does appear as expected in Middle Irish inneóin and Modern Irish inneoin, suggesting that the spelling indéin (which occurs only once) may be a scribal error.

Alternatively, Pedersen reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *n̥dʰi-ponis (giving Proto-Celtic *andeɸonis in our notation), which would be cognate with Lithuanian pìnti (“to plait”), Old Church Slavonic пѧти (pęti, “to tie, fix”), Ancient Greek πένομαι (pénomai, “to toil, labor”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)penh₁- (“to twist, weave”). However, this connection is semantically less plausible than the connection with verbs meaning “strike, hit”.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈin͈ʲdʲeːnʲ] (if it is not a scribal error)
• IPA^(key): [ˈin͈ʲdʲeːu̯nʲ] (if it is a scribal error)

Noun

indéin f

1. anvil

Inflection

Inflected forms are not attested until Middle Irish.

Quotations

• c. 845, St Gall Glosses on Priscian, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1975, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. II, pp. 49–224, Sg. 110^b1

  indéin [translating incus] ― anvil

Descendants

• Middle Irish: indeóin, inneóin
  • Irish: inneoin
  • Manx: ingan
  • Scottish Gaelic: innean

Mutation

Mutation of indéin

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

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), “indeóin”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language