subae

Old Irish

Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *subwiyom, from *su- (“good”) +‎ *-bwi- (“being”) +‎ *-om (verbal noun suffix), literally “being good”. Compare the formation of the antonym dubae (“sorrow, grief”, literally “being bad”).

Noun

subae n

1. joy, pleasure, happiness, merriment
   • c. 808, Félire Oengusso, April 1; republished as Whitley Stokes, transl., Félire Óengusso Céli Dé: The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee, Harrison & Sons, 1905:

     co ngaib as mó subae: féil de félib Máire.

     [Ambrose] takes what is greater happiness - one of Mary's feasts.

   • c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 146^d2

     "a subae" glosses iubelatio

   • c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 47^d2

     "int suibi" glosses iubelationis

Inflection

Neuter io-stem
	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	subaeN	—	—
Vocative	subaeN	—	—
Accusative	subaeN	—	—
Genitive	subaiL	—	—
Dative	subuL	—	—
Initial mutations of a following adjective: H = triggers aspiration L = triggers lenition N = triggers nasalization

Antonyms

• dubae (“grief”)

Derived terms

• subach

Descendants

• Irish: subha (“joy”)

Mutation

Old Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Nasalization
subae	ṡubae	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), “subae”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language