v1.0
Published 01/10/24
bòrd m. (e.g. Lewis) [b̥ɔːɖ̥], (e.g. Uist) [b̥ɔːʂt̪], (e.g. Barra) [b̥ɔːɍt̪], gen. bùird, ‘table; plank, board, deal; board (directors or managers of company etc.); boarding; edge, especially of the sea or a lake; shore’ (Dwelly 1911). While McDonald (2009, 344) considers a loan from ON borð m. ‘plank; table (for food); board, food maintenance at table; gaming board; the side of a ship; edge; rim; shield’ (NO) to Scottish Gaelic in the senses ‘plank; side of ship’ to be likely (although in the sense ‘table’ uncertain), a Norse derivation is entertained only briefly by Craigie (1894, 157), who considers an Old English provenance more likely, and by Oftedal (1972, 118), who suggests that (?from a semantic point of view) bòrd ‘could be imagined to have originated either in a Norse word or in one of its English cognates’, but who earlier (1956, 71) states that bòrd is ultimately from OEng. bord, as does MacBain (1911), although the latter also cites the Norse cognate. ON ð yields a plosive in Scottish Gaelic only in exceptional circumstances, s.v. bacbòrd. Cf. EG bord (bordd) ‘edge, side, border, brink (of terrain; of constructions; of ships: board; side, gunwale, bulwark); board, table; seat, bench’, which is derived exceptionally from Old Norse (Zimmer 1888, 464; Bugge 1912, 292), more usually from Old English (Stokes 1892, 126), with some of its senses the result of Old Norse influence (Marstrander 1915a, 43, 121; eDIL˄).