Matheson Collection > Reliquiae Celticae > Poetry, history and philology

GLOSSARY OF UNPUBLISHED ETYMOLOGIES
The etymologies which Dr Cameron pubHshed in the Gdcl and in
the Scottish Celtic Review are easily accessible to the public, and
are not here reproduced ; but an index to them all follows this
(ilossary. Here we give all the unpublished or fugitive deriva-
tions that Dr Cameron has left. These are of two kinds ; first,
the etymologies in the MS. of the uncompleted dictionary, which
are contemporary with those given in the Gael, and date about
the years 1872 to 1876 ; second, the etymologies found in papers
contemporary with the work of the Scottish Celtic Review (1880-86).
The latter etymologies contain his ripest wxrk ; the former are
often tentative, and many of them, as in the Gael, are either
obsolete or erroneous. In this case, their source and error are
both indicated in our Glossary : the abbreviation D. indicates that
the source of the doubtful or corrected etymology has been the
Dictionary and Dr Cameron's earlier papers. The abbreviations
made use of in this Glossary mostly explain themselves. In the
compound abbreviations, 0., E., and M. mean Old, Early, and
Middle, as 0. Ir. stands for Old Irish. O.H.G. means Old Higli
(ierman ; W. is for Welsh, Ag. S. is for Anglo-Saxon, Skr. for
Sanskrit, and Lit. for Lithuanian ; G. means Gaelic. Dr Cameron
uses the sign = for both " allied to" and " borrowed from," which
is very confusing. We have indicated the cases where the mean-
ing must be "borrowed from" by a bracketed " from."
A.
a, sign of voc, Lat. o, Greek o.
a, his, her, Skr. asya, his, asyds, her [Celtic genitive esjo, esjds,
allied to Got. is, his, Ger. er, he.]
aba, abbot, from Lat. ahixis, ahhatis. Hence abaid.
abhal, apple ; sec ubhall.
abharsair, the Devil, (_). Gael, adhirseoir = [fi'om] Lat. adversarivs.
Also aibhistear.
abhlan, wafer, ancient oblann, from Lat. ohlationem.
achd, decree = [from] Lat. actus. Hence also its meaning of
" condition, state."
adhaltras, adultery, O. (i. adaltras, from Lat. adidierinm, with (J.
suffix as.