nGéadal
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| Ogham letters | |||
| Aicme Beithe | Aicme Muine | ||
| ᚁ | Beith | ᚋ | Muin |
| ᚂ | Luis | ᚌ | Gort |
| ᚃ | Fearn | ᚍ | nGéadal |
| ᚄ | Sail | ᚎ | Straif |
| ᚅ | Nion | ᚏ | Ruis |
| Aicme hÚatha | Aicme Ailme | ||
| ᚆ | Uath | ᚐ | Ailm |
| ᚇ | Dair | ᚑ | Onn |
| ᚈ | Tinne | ᚒ | Úr |
| ᚉ | Coll | ᚓ | Eadhadh |
| ᚊ | Ceirt | ᚔ | Iodhadh |
| Forfeda | |||
| ᚕ | Éabhadh | ||
| ᚖ | Ór | ||
| ᚗ | Uilleann | ||
| ᚘ | Ifín | ᚚ | Peith |
| ᚙ | Eamhancholl | ||
- Note: This article contains special characters.
nGéadal is the Irish name of the thirteenth letter of the Ogham alphabet, ᚍ.
The Bríatharogam (kennings) for the letter are:
- lúth lego "sustenance of a leech"
- étiud midach "raiment of physicians"
- tosach n-échto "beginning of slaying"
Its meaning is probably "[the act of] wounding". In Old Irish, the letter name was Gétal. It may be a verbal noun of gonid 'wounds, slays'. in which case is related to Welsh gwanu 'to pierce, to stab', which comes from the root was *gʷhen- 'to pierce, to strike'. Its original phonetic value in Primitive Irish was [gʷ], the voiced labiovelar. In Old Irish, this phoneme merged with g (gort), and the medieval manuscript tradition assigns it Latin ng [ŋ], hence the unetymological spelling of the letter name with initial n-.
[edit] References
- Damian McManus, Irish letter-names and their kennings, Ériu 39 (1988), 127-168.
