lóeg

Old Irish

Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *lāɸigos (“calf”) (compare Welsh llo, Cornish leugh), diminutive from Proto-Indo-European *leh₂p- (“cattle”) (compare Latvian lùops (“cattle”), Albanian lopë (“cow”)).^[1]

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [l͈oːi̯ɣ]

Noun

lóeg m (genitive loíg, nominative plural loíg)

1. calf

   Synonyms: báethán, bóbán, fíthal, gamuin

2. (figuratively) favourite, darling

Inflection

Masculine o-stem
	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	lóeg	lóegL	loígL
Vocative	loíg	lóegL	lóeguH
Accusative	lóegN	lóegL	lóeguH
Genitive	loígL	lóeg	lóegN
Dative	lóegL	lóegaib	lóegaib
Initial mutations of a following adjective: H = triggers aspiration L = triggers lenition N = triggers nasalization

Descendants

• Irish: lao
• Manx: lheiy
• Scottish Gaelic: laogh

Mutation

Old Irish mutation
Radical	Lenition	Nasalization
lóeg also llóeg after a proclitic ending in a vowel	lóeg pronounced with /l(ʲ)-/	unchanged
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

References

1. Ranko Matasović, Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic (Leiden: Brill, 2009), p. 231.

Further reading

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