Gàidhlig / English
neo-sgrìdealachd

neo-sgrìdealachd

Posted by Alasdair on 4 January 2018
I wrote a blog entry on 9 March last year about the MS Slips project here at DASG.  These are the slips — over 22,000 of them — excerpted by Ronald Black in 1974 as part of his work on The Historical Dictionary of Scottish Gaelic.  On these slips are quotations — single words and phrases — from the wealthy corpus of Gaelic manuscripts.
 
Among them are eighteenth-century writings by Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (aka Alexander MacDonald) and this extraordinary man is an invaluable source himself as regards Scottish Gaelic.  It is mac Mhaighstir Alasdair who records the word “neimhsgridolicht” in Adv. MS 72.2.11 (Cath Fionntragha), a manuscript which can be found in the Catalogue of Gaelic Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland and has been digitised here.  On the slip we have here at DASG, Ronald Black translated this word as ‘lack of stridency’ and it grabbed my attention.
 
Neo-sgrìdealachd is perhaps the best modern form of this word.  You won’t find ‘sgrìdealachd’ in the LearnGaelic dictionary but it can be found in Dwelly.  It is a feminine noun, according to Dwelly, who defines it as ‘life, vigour, liveliness; mettle’.  The term is clearly related to ‘sgrìd’, a feminine noun recorded by LearnGaelic (‘last breath/gasp’) as well as by Dwelly (‘breath; the least breath of life or air; voice; gasp’).  The following phrase is also recorded in Dwelly’s entry on ‘sgrìd’: ‘chan eil sgrìd ann’ (‘there is not a breath in him, he is quite dead’).  There is also a related adjective: ‘sgrìdeil’ (‘lively, vigorous, active, sprightly’: Dwelly; ‘lively, vigorous’: LearnGaelic).
 
So: Sunday was ‘sgrìd na bliadhna’, i.e. ‘the last gasp of the year’, as it were and that reminds me: Bliadhna Mhath Ùr / Bliadh’ Ùr Mhath!  I hope you all have a positively sgrìdeil year ahead of you.

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