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Published 01/10/24
bleidir m. [ˈb̥led̪̥ʲiɾʲ],
Cf. /bleːdʲirʲ/ (sic) (AFB˄: bleideir). Dwelly (1911) gives genitive bleidire.
also bleidire m. [ˈb̥led̪̥ʲiɾʲə],
(Glengarry) [blédjirˈə] (Dieckhoff 1932: bleidire).
‘beggar, teazing petitioner; impertinent fellow; coward; pilferer; wolf’ (Dwelly 1911). Following MacBain (1911: bleideir), this word is derived by Stewart (2004, 408: bleidire) from ON bleyði f. ‘cowardice’. On the other hand, McDonald (2009, 343) considers the loan uncertain, while Oftedal (1962, 120) states that the word cannot ‘be safely identified with Old Norse’;
Pace McDonald (≈2009, 343): in not offering an alternative, Oftedal does not ‘prefer English as the source’.
this is no doubt because ON ey would be expected to yield SG [eː], and because ON ð would not normally be expected to yield a plosive in Scottish Gaelic. MacBain, however, has a question mark against his derivaton, adding ‘and Sc[ots] blate (?)’,
Scots blate adj. ‘modest, diffident, bashful, sheepish; put out, embarrassed’ (SND˄).
perhaps suggesting a parallel development.
The abstract nouns bleid f.
Bleid is described as a verb in Kidd 2016, 397, but from its context (a’ bleid, p. 144, line 17 (from Cuairtear nan Gleann I, No. 5, p. 101, line 33), it is clearly functioning as a verbal noun.
and bleidireachd f., the adjective bleideil and the agent nouns bleidir and bleidire are found in Scottish Gaelic dictionaries, the first as early as 1780 (Shaw
Shaw also has bleidal (sic) adj. in his English-Gaelic volume.
). Under SG bleid, Armstrong (1825) compares Ir. bleid, while for its own sources HSS (1828) cites Shaw and O’Reilly’s Irish-English dictionary (first published in 1817), which gives bleid f., bleidearacht/bleidiracht m. (sic), bleideamhuil adj.
The entry reads ‘Bleiḋeaṁuil bleiddeamhuil, adj. adulatory; troublesome, impertinent’, where a corrective d seems to have been added to bleideamhuil rather than substituted for the erroneous ḋ in Bleiḋeaṁuil.
and bleidire m.
None of these forms were traced in O’Clery (1643) or Lhuyd (1707).
The sense ‘coward’ for SG bleidir, bleidire appears to occur only in Dwelly, and its source has not been traced. At first sight, it seems at odds with other senses of the word, but it may simply be an extension of the more central ‘beggar, teazing petitioner; impertinent fellow; pilferer’, just as the sense ‘wolf’ probably is.
MacBain suggests that SG and Ir. bleid may, like SG blad and bladair (q.v.), be formed on Eng. blatter ‘to prate’ and blatterer ‘bletherer, blusterer’; indeed, in Ó Dónaill’s Irish-English dictionary (1977), bleidire is equated with bladaire.
On the other hand, it is just conceivable that SG bleidir is ultimately from Eng. bleater ‘one who bleats’. In a figurative sense, bleater was a cant term for ‘someone cheated by someone else’ (Egan 1823, s.v. bleaters). If Eng. bleat meant ‘an instance of someone being cheated’, the term bleater might have also developed the sense ‘the person carrying out a bleat’. Although a development of Eng. bleat to SG and Ir. bleid is acceptable phonetically (where the dental might be the result of dative inflexion of a feminine noun), there is no evidence to support the necessary semantic development.