comairle

Old Irish

Etymology

From com- +‎ airle.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈkoβ̃ɨr͈ʲlʲe]

Noun

comairle f

1. verbal noun of con·airlethar
2. advice, counsel
   • 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. 23^b10

     Hó goistiu .i. do·bert goiste imma brágait fadesin ɔid·marb, húare nád ndigni Abisolón a chomairli.

     By a noose, i.e. he put a noose around his own neck so that it killed him, because Absalom did not follow his advice.

     (literally, “do his advice”)

3. council

Inflection

Feminine iā-stem
	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	comairleL	—	—
Vocative	comairleL	—	—
Accusative	comairliN	—	—
Genitive	comairle	—	—
Dative	comairliL	—	—
Initial mutations of a following adjective: H = triggers aspiration L = triggers lenition N = triggers nasalization

Synonyms

• (advice, counsel): airle, sanas

Descendants

• Irish: comhairle
• Manx: coyrle
• Scottish Gaelic: comhairle

Mutation

Old Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Nasalization
comairle	chomairle	comairle pronounced with /ɡ(ʲ)-/
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

Further reading

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “comairle”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language