enech

Old Irish

Alternative forms

• enach (Milan glosses only)
• einech

Etymology

From a compound of *h₁én (“in”) and *h₃ekʷ- (“eye”). The Proto-Celtic noun is usually reconstructed as *enīkʷom, but Matasović departs from the norm to reconstruct *enekʷom instead, leaving the raising in the dative inchaib unexplained.

Oddly, the n seems to be unpalatalized in the Milan glosses, even though its palatalisation is both expected and more amply attested elsewhere.

Noun

enech n pl (genitive enech)

1. face
   • c. 760 Blathmac mac Con Brettan, published in "A study of the lexicon of the poems of Blathmac Son of Cú Brettan" (2017; PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth), edited and with translations by Siobhán Barrett, stanza 48

     Fo·cresa saile – gním col – i n-einech in dúilemon.

     Spittles were cast – deed of sins – in the face of the creator.

2. front
   • 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. 100^b2

     tarsainniu .i. ní [i]na n-enech ro·bitha, acht is inna ndrummai.

     opposing, i.e. it is not in their faces that they had been wounded, but it is in their backs.

3. honour, dignity

Inflection

Descendants

• Middle Irish: enech, einech, ainech
  • Irish: oineach, eineach

Mutation

References

Further reading

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “1 enech, ainech”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language