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From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: etymology of "geas"
In-Reply-To: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu's message of Fri, 20 Jan 1995 04:34:47 GMT
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References: <By27hLz.bwelden@delphi.com> <1995Jan20.043447.18579@midway.uchicago.edu>
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 19:01:07 GMT
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In article <1995Jan20.043447.18579@midway.uchicago.edu> deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu
(Daniel von Brighoff) writes:

>In article <By27hLz.bwelden@delphi.com> bwelden@delphi.com writes:

>>Once, sometime during the thirty-odd years that I have been reading, I came
>>across the word "geas", which I took from context to mean a magic spell, or
>>more specifically a bond of obligation imposed magically.  Now I've looked in
>>all of my dictionaries, and I can't find it (and there's a *lot* of
>>off-the-wall stuff in the OED).

Possible Myers' _Silverlock_ (1949)?  First place I encountered it...

>>It might have been in something by Cabell (which would argue for it having
>>some historical reality); and I remember a friend telling me that it was
>>Celtic (or if not Celtic then taken from Celtic mythology), and that it
>>referred to "earth" magic, possibly an explanation of its etymology.

>Folk etymology, more like it.  It has nothing to do with Greek 'ge' "earth".
>The word is Irish.  If you want to know its etymology, you'll have to hunt
>down an Irish etymological dictionary (good luck!) or a monograph on the
>subject of geasa in Irish literature and folklore.

This is of course not "folk etymology" in the technical sense, which rather
refers to the phonological re-shaping of words to make them less transparent
(for example, "sparrowgrass" for "asparagus").

>Btw, it's pronounced (IPA) [gj%s]/'gyass' (rhymes with American English
>'glass'), not [gi@s]/ 'ghee-uss', as I always hear RPGers say it.

American English 'glass' in what part of the country?  In Chicago that may be a
mid-low front vowel, not a low front vowel.  (I don't remember what <%> means
in EK's ASCII IPA.)

However, knowing that it's Irish explains the spelling:  That <a> is an ortho-
graphic device to indicate that the final <s> is not palatal(ized), and has
nothing to do with the vocalic nucleus of the word.

Thanks for the pointer.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
