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Published 01/10/24
cairb f. [kʰɛɾ͡ʲɛb̥], gen. ?idem, in the sense ‘ship’, along with SG carbh, carbhan (s.v. carbh) and cárbhair [sic] (s.v. càrbhair), is derived by McDonald (2009, 369) from ON karfi m. ‘a medium-sized boat’ (NO).
Bugge (1912, 292), Falk (1912, 94) and de Vries (1962, 308) also confuse SG cairb with carbh.
MacBain (1911) notes the sense ‘bent ridge of a cart saddle’ and explains cairb and Ir. corb (leg. carb) as ‘the primary stem from which [SG and Ir.] carbad “chariot” springs’.
SG cairb (carb) and Ir. carb (cairb) go back to OG corb(b), also coirb, which is glossed as [OG] carput (carpat) ‘chariot’ (see Early Irish Glossaries Database˄, Sanas Cormaic B.136, and which Vendryes (1996) derives from Lat. corbis ‘wicker basket’.
Armstrong (1825) also derives SG †carb from Lat. corbis.
Ir. carb (cairb) has the senses ‘chariot, carriage, bier, litter, plank and ship’;
Ir. carb (Lhuyd 1707: †carb ‘chariot’; O’Brien 1768: carb ‘chariot or litter’ and, under a separate entry, ‘basket’; O’Reilly 1817: idem ‘litter, bier, carriage’ and, under separate entries, ‘basket’ and ‘plank’); cairb (O’Reilly 1817: ‘plank’ and, under a separate entry, ‘fusee’; Dinneen 1947: ‘ship’. O’Reilly also gives cairbh ‘chariot’, but this is likely to be a typesetting error for cairb.
SG cairb (carb) has the senses ‘basket, chariot, plank and ship, plough, jaw, gum and the arch of a saddle’
SG cairb (Shaw 1780: ‘plank, chariot’ and, under a separate entry, ‘ship’; Armstrong 1825: ‘chariot, ship, plank’; HSS 1828: ‘chariot, plank, ship’ and, under a separate entry, ‘the bent ridge of a girt saddle’; MacLeod and Dewar 1833: ‘chariot, ship, plank’; CG II, 238: ‘chariot’; Dwelly 1911: ‘the bent ridge of a girth-saddle; chariot; ship; plank; plough’, †cairb ‘jaw, gum’; Dwelly App.: ‘the wooden arch of a saddle; carcass, provincial for cairb[h]’; AFB˄: ‘the bent ridge of a girth-saddle; chariot (archaic); basket (archaic)’ and, under a separate entry, m. ‘jaw’), carb (Shaw 1780: ‘chariot, ship’ and, under a separate entry, ‘plank’; Armstrong 1825: †carb: ‘basket, chariot, plank, ship’; HSS 1828: see cairb; Dwelly 1911: †carb ‘basket; chariot (cairb); plank; ship’.
and, as a truncation
As suggested by MacBain (1911).
of SG cairbinn, ‘fusil or fusee (a light musket)’.
Shaw 1780: cairb ‘fusee’; Armstrong 1825: idem; HSS 1828: ‘fusil’; MacLeod and Dewar 1833: ‘fusee’; Dwelly 1911: idem.
,
Quick (1986, 101–02) suggests that SG cairbinn (1649) is from either 17th-century Eng. carabine or 17th-century Scots carabine (carrabin); the English form carbine is first attested in 1660 (OED˄). An alternative source might be Ir. cairbín (O’Begly 1732: carbine ‘cairbín’).
Derivatives: SG coirbeig ‘yawl; ship’s boat’ (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh˄), with the diminutive suffix -eig (< -ag), and corbair ‘coachman’ (ibid.: Strathglass), with the agent suffix -air. Dwelly (1911) lists †cairbheacan ‘ship-boy’, which probably goes back to MacLeod and Dewar (1833: idem), whose own listing probably goes back to Shaw (1780: cairbhecan [sic]). Rather than have anything to do with SG carbh ‘ship, boat’, however, Shaw’s form may in fact be for *cairbeagan and may have been adopted from Irish, cf. O’Reilly’s (1817) Ir. cairbeacan ‘ship-boy’, i.e. *cairbeagán, with the suffix -agán. Dinneen (1947) lists Ir. cairbín ‘little ship’, with the diminutive suffix -ín.