atbaill

Old Irish

Alternative forms

• ad·baill, at·bail

Etymology

From ess- (“out of”) +‎ Class B third-person singular neuter infixed pronoun d- (“it”) +‎ Proto-Celtic *balnīti, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH- (“throw”). Thus literally ‘throw it’, originally either a euphemism or slang.

The preterite forms in at·bath- and the verbal noun apthu are from ess- +‎ d- +‎ original preterite passive form of baïd (“to die”), from Proto-Celtic *bā-, *bayo-, from Proto-Indo-European *gʷeh₂- (“tread”) (via a euphemistic meaning similar to pass away).

Compare Middle Welsh aballu (“die, perish”) (from *ad-balni-), Ancient Greek βάλλω (bállō, “throw”), Old English cwelan (“die”), Old Armenian կեղեմ (kełem, “torment, torture”), Lithuanian gėlà (“pain”)), compare Old Armenian կամ (kam, “to stand”), Latvian gāja (“went”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /adˈval͈ʲ/

Verb

at·baill (prototonic ·epil, verbal noun epeltu or apthu)

1. to perish, die

   Synonyms: ara·chrin, baïd

For quotations using this term, see Citations:atbaill.

Conjugation

The identification of this verb's present conjugation class is highly controversial due to simultaneously exhibiting alternation between a nasal suffixed present (seen in the -ll- ← -ln- attested only in the present stem) and non-nasal-suffix non-present stems characteristic of B IV and B V verbs in addition to the palatalization pattern of a B I verb. Virtually every author places this verb in a different conjugation class. Thurneysen classifies this as B V, McCone classifies this as B III, Le Mair classifies this as B I, and Anderson creates an entire new conjugation class reserved for this verb, ernaid, sernaid, and marnaid.

Descendants

• Middle Irish: eplaid, ablaid

References

Further reading

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “at-bail(l)”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language