Geiriadur Cymraeg a Saesneg : Spurrell's Welsh-English dictionary

National Library Of Scotland, William Spurrell, J. Bodvan (John Bodvan) Anwyl

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• Langue: English
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Wá.\<\//^Sfeí*.*.tó^^W L,ff '^^7i0'5'^A SAESNEGGEIRIADUR CYMRAEG 'Spurrell j Welsh-English Dictionary Edited by ANWYLBODVANJ. hyWith a Preface the late SIR EDWARD ANWYL Twelfth Edition^ corrected and augmented Carmailbcn W. SPURRELL & SON 1934SPURRELL'S WELSH-ENGLISH DICTIONARYDEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO THE RIGHT HON. SIR JOHN RHYS, P.C., D.LITT., LL.D., IN RECOGNITION OF HIS GREAT SERVICES TO LEARNING AND TO WALES.PREFACE TO SIXTH EDITION greatest pleasure to be able to associate mj'self most cordiallyir gives me the with the present re-issue, under the editorship of my brother, BodvanJ. Anwyl, of Spurrell's well-known Welsh-English Dictionary. Nor is my co- operation confined to the writing of the present preface. Along with some of my friends and colleagues, I have, as opportunity offered, given the editor whatever assistance was within my power in the pursuance of his difficult hand it was necessary to eliminate from the dictionarytask. On the one all those words whose existence is only lexicographical, while, on the other hand, it was found necessary to include many words, both ancient and modern, which have from their actual use a tr\ie place in the Welsh tongue. Owing to the marked increase in recent years of the students of the older Welsh litera- it thought advisable to e.xplain as many as possible of the wordsture, was occur in the course of their reading. At the same time, itwhich might was regarded as most important that the Dictionary should remain a convenient and portable volume ; and, for this purpose, the meanings of the words had to be so compressed and arranged that the eye would not have far to travel in search of the required meaning. The present work does not pretend to be for a large and encyclopedic Dictionary based on historicala substitute relations of the various meanings to anotherprinciples, where the one are elaborately investigated, and exemplified by quotations. Its aim is pre- eminently the practical one of aiding the struggling reader and student to translate acciu-ately the passages that are before him. With the present as his guide, and with a sound knowledge of grammar, the carefulDictionary very far astray.translator ought not to go It is not improbable that the present volume will be largely used by con- tinental students of the Welsh tongue. There are at the various continental seats of learning a certain number of scholars (mostly students of philology) who pay some attention in the course of their philological studies to the languages, and, among them, to the Welsh tongue. Moreover, occa-Celtic Welsh not unknown even among those whose vernacularsional students of are this ableis English. Henceforth, students of type will be to make surer progress in the study of Welsh through the possession of a concise but ac- curate Dictionary. This may possibly lead to the study abroad not only of vocabulary of Welsh but also of Welsh literature. The gems of Welshthe example, deserve to find their place in the mental storehouses ofpoetry, for European scholars. The poetic literature of the worldthe most erudite would certainly be the poorer for the absence from it of some of the poems that have rightly found a place in such collections as Caniadau Cymru and Cywyddau Cynnu, and there will always be savants in Europe and elsewhere whom no anti-Celtic prejudice will deter from exploring the beauties of Irish literature. To men of this type an accurate and portable Dic-and Welsh which they can carry with them in comfort during their travels,tionary, will be a great boon, and the elimination from the Dictionary of non-existent Welsh words will do much to prevent the appearance, in continental philo- logical v\ orks, of Welsh words which have been culled from dictionaries onlyanIn this way the present Dictionary, though making no pretence to be of etymological character, may indirectly help to advance the comparative philology of the Celtic languages. been adopted for the present Dictionary is in theThe spelling which has Society, with some slight modifications ofmain that of the Welsh Language myself concur, such asa minor character, in which Prof. Morris Jones andJ. athe doubling of n in words like annifyr and annherfynol, where an- bears secondary accent. The orthographical system in question is a simplification of the traditional spelling of the language to which we are guided by the absolutely invariable) practice of the leading poets,dominant (though not words themselves. For example, cannu,as well as by the etymology of the (found in Latinto whiten, owes its nn to the original nd of the root cand- candeo), while in canu, to sing, as may be seen from the Latin crt»o, 1 sing, the root contained but one n. We have a similar instance of one n in terfymi, a derivative of which has come from the Latin terminus. There ap-ierfyn, misapprehension as to the orthographicalpears to be in some quarters a that one occasion-principles of the Welsh Language Society, with the result like,ally sees such spellings as penderfynnu, mynnydd, njonnydd, and the employed by writers who imagine that thev are using forms that are in the highest degree acceptable to the learned promulgators of the Welsh Language Society's system, whereas the exact contrary is the case, since the system in doubling, even of n and r, than toquestion is no less hostile to superfluous tradi-the omission of the doubling of these two consonants, where there is a tional and etymological justification for such doubling. It is to be hoped that the appearance of this new edition of Spurrell's well- known Dictionary will be the means of promoting more thorough research than ever vocabulary of the Welsh tongue. Those of us whobefore into the thehave helped in the task of seeing the present work through press are keenly alive to the importance of ascertaining with greater clearness the meanings of many words that occur, for example, in old Welsh poetry, as well as in the legal, medical, and other prose writings of the Middle Ages. Of great importance, study of Welsh dialects, where from time totoo, is the time discovered in actual living use.many a rare literary word has been Readers of 'iiediaval MSS. would do well to note any word which they may discover in the course of their reading that does not occur in any Welsh dictionary, so that in future editions of the present work, or in any future dictionary that published, such additional words may be included,may be and alive to the possibilitystudents of Welsh dialects cannot be too keenly earlierof discovering even in colloquial speech some survivals of an vocabu- lary. My brother, no less than myself, will be exceedingly grateful for any addi- tional light which may be thrown upon the meanings of difficult words, as well as repaid if we can Befor words never yet recorded. We shall be amply the knowledge of thechannels for communicating to the world some further tongue of our fathers, whose very existence in the world to-day is little short of a miracle; and any help which we may receive from our fellow-countrymen towards the fulfilment of this pleasant task we shall gratefully acknowledge. The more critically Dictionary is read (so long as the criticism isthe present based brother andupon knowledge and stimulates inquiry), the better my myself, in common with students of the language generally, will be pleased, since, in spite of the valuable services of previous lexicographers, the mean- ings of many of the older Welsh words have not yet been ascertained with that precision which desire, though it has to be frankly admittedone couldthat genuine progress has been made in the matter of their interpretation of recent years, especially through the help of Comparative Philology, the of Latin element in Welsh, and the study of Welsh Historicalstudy the translators of the Cynfeirdd and the Gogynjeirdd wereGrammar. The older acquaintance with accidenceoften led astray through their imperfect the and syntax of the Welsh of those periods. The marvel is that, with such imperfect instruments, the older students of early Welsh literature should have accomplished so much, and the present writer cordially joins with his fellow-countrymen in paying a tribute of respect to those scholars and stu- aid in the past Welsh lexicography would have beendents, without whose in a far worse plight than it is to-day. October E. ANWYI..31, 1913. NOTE survivedMy brother. Sir Edward Anwyl, died on August 7th, 1914, having his forty-eighth birthday by exactly two days. Under the circumstances I it desirable to define more clearly his relation to this work,have thought preface, has been close and intimate. Whilewhich, as will be seen from the him from collaboratingmy brother's numerous and varied activities precluded helpful consultant.actively in its preparation, he was always a most willing and anyDuring the first revision it was my practice to reserve every word of difficulty, and submit it to him. By this means hundreds of words were either re-defined. The list of place-names he himself corrected, whilsteliminated or though prepared by myself in the first instance,the list of prefixes and suffixes, dictionary was thenwas subjected by him to a careful revision. The whole whose aid Iread in proof by him, as well as by most of the other scholars fromsought, and after the issue of the work he would communicate to me time to time any discoveries which he or his friends might make. In this way many errors were corrected, and several of his own former judgments For present edition he read carefully for me the Blackwere reversed. the Taliessin, and theBook of Carmarthen, the Book of Aneirin, the Book of words thus col-poetry in the Red Book of Hergest. The greater part of the proportionlected are in this edition recorded and defined, but a considerable were reserved by him for fuller consideration. These words I have now sub- mitted to a scholar whom my brother suggested as being as likely as anyone further ligh