frith-

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See also: frith, Frith, fríth, frìth, and friþ

Irish

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Old Irish frith- (“counter-, beside, against”), from the verbal nouns of Old Irish verbs like fris·beir, fris·aicci, fris·indlea with the initial preverb fri, from Proto-Celtic *writ- (compare Welsh wrth, prefix gwrth-), from the zero grade of Proto-Indo-European *wert- (“to turn”) (compare Latin versus (“against”)).

Prefix

frith-

  1. anti-, counter-
    Synonym: anta-
  2. back
    Synonym: cúl-

Derived terms

Irish terms prefixed with frith-

Mutation

Irish mutation
Radical Lenition Eclipsis
frith- fhrith- bhfrith-
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Further reading

Old Irish

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *writ- (compare Welsh wrth, prefix gwrth-), from the zero grade of Proto-Indo-European *wert- (“to turn”) (compare Latin versus (“against”)).

Pronunciation

Prefix

frith- (pretonic fris-)

  1. counter-, beside, against

Usage notes

There are three basic shapes of the prefix, used in the following manner:

  • Frith- proper manifests as such before morpheme-initial vowels.
    ‎frith- (“beside”) + ‎aire (“watching”) → ‎frithaire (“vigil”, literally “watching beside”)
    ‎frith- + ‎orcun (“striking down”) → ‎frithorcun (“injury”)
  • Fris- and fres- tend to appear before resonants. Originally fres- was created by a following vowel lowering the vowel in older fris-, but by Old Irish times the two variants were interchangeable.
  • Fre- and fri- were used before stops. Like with fris- and fres-, the distribution of these two variants originally depended on whether the following morpheme caused its original -i- to lower to -e-, but by the Old Irish period this distribution was not strictly followed. It triggered no mutation of the next morpheme in line.
    ‎frith- (“beside”) + ‎cor (“putting”) → ‎frecor (“cultivation, worship”)
    ‎frith- (“against”) + ‎tuidecht (“coming”) → ‎frituidecht (“opposition”, literally “coming against”)

Later on, the non-frith- forms became fossilized as frith- overtook the other shapes in productivity. Frith- also caused lenition of the initial consonant of a following morpheme as this happened. For instance, ‎frith- + ‎gním (“work”) → ‎frithgnam (“pains, labour, work”).

Derived terms

Old Irish terms prefixed with frith-

Descendants

  • Middle Irish: frith-

Scottish Gaelic

Etymology

From frith.

Prefix

frith-

  1. by-, sub-
  2. counter-

Derived terms

Scottish Gaelic terms prefixed with frith-

Mutation

Scottish Gaelic mutation
Radical Lenition
frith fhrith
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.
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