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Published 01/10/24
carbh m. and f. [ˈkʰaɾ͡av], gen. cairbh [ˈkʰɛɾ͡ʲɛv], ‘ship, boat’
Shaw 1780: carbh ‘ship’; Armstrong 1825: †carbh ‘idem’; McAlpine 1832: carbh ‘ship or boat, built after a particular fashion’, Islay; MacLennan 1925: idem ‘ship or boat, built after a particular fashion (carvel built)’. Carbh ‘ship’ occurs in three poems in The Book of the Dean of Lismore: (Watson 1978) masc. in ‘Créad í an long-sa ar Loch Inse’: lines 2173, 2175; fem. in ‘Tánaig long ar Loch Raithneach’: lines 2237, 2249, 2252; for Watson’s ‘Dál chabhlaigh ar Chaistéal Suibhne’, pp. 6–13, see Meek 1997: stanzas 9, 12. In HSS 1828: carbh ‘ship; plough; chariot; plank’ and MacLeod and Dewar 1833: †carbh ‘ship; chariot, plank’, the senses ‘plough, chariot and plank’ seem to be the result of conflation with SG cairb, s.v.
is derived from ON karfi m. ‘a medium-sized boat’ (NO) by Henderson (1910, 138), MacBain (1911), MacLennan (1925), Stewart (2004, 408) and Cox (2008b, 173), as is Ir. carbh ‘idem’
Plunkett 1662: navis ‘long, carbh’; O’Clery 1643: carbh, .i. long ‘ship’; Lhuyd 1707: †carbh ‘long, a ship’; O’Brien 1768: carbh ‘ship’; O’Reilly 1817: idem; Dinneen 1947: idem ‘ship, bier, carriage’; Ó Dónaill 1977: idem ‘ship’.
by Meyer (1906, 317), Falk (1912, 94), Vendryes (1912, 230), Marstrander (1915a, 61, 106, 132) and Sandberg-McGowan (1996, 219), and EG carḃ by Marstrander (ibid., 157), so also eDIL˄ and Schulze-Thulin (1996, 106).
Marstrander (1910, 400) implies EG cairpthi ‘ships’ derives directly from the Old Norse plural karfar, but cairpthi is a native plural form, with a plural formation modelled upon dental stems (cf. OG traiġiḋ ‘tongues’, (acc.) traiġthea, (dat.) traiġthiḃ (Thurneysen 1975, 205)).
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Commentators occasionally confuse SG and Ir. carbh and EG carḃ, or their derivatives, with similar words (s.vv. SG cairb and SG càrbhair): Craigie (1894, 155–56) has SG and Ir. cairbh (leg. carbh), also Ir. cairbhin (leg. cairbhín); Bugge (1912, 292) has SG cairb (leg. carbh); similarly Falk (1912, 94) and de Vries (1962, 308). Dwelly (1911) refers the reader from †carbh to cairb, and McDonald (2009, 369) links SG and Ir. carbh and EG carḃ, along with the derivative SG carbhan, with SG cairb and cárbhair [sic]. Cox (2008b, 173) inadvertently cites Mx carroo [‘carp’], s.v. carbhanach.
ON karfa acc. would be expected to yield SG *carbha *[ˈkʰaɾ͡avə] in the first instance, carbh with apocope, cf. ON karfa acc. m. > SG carbh ‘carp’ (s.v. carbhanach), and ON skarf acc. m. > SG sgarbh m. ‘cormorant’ (s.v.).
McAlpine (1832) connects SG carbh with Islay (so also Henderson and MacBain); MacLennan (1925) notes that a carbh is ‘carvel built’, i.e. with planking lain edge to edge rather than overlapping (i.e. clinker built); cf. SG càrbhair, s.v.
Derivatives: these include the diminutive SG carbhan ‘little ship’;
Shaw 1780; Armstrong 1825; Dwelly 1911.
the agent noun carbhanach ‘ship-master’;
Shaw 1780: carb[h]anach; Armstrong 1825: carbhanach; MacLeod and Dewar 1833: †carbhanach; Dwelly 1911: idem.
and the verb cairbh ‘to man a ship’.
Armstrong 1825; HSS 1828; MacLeod and Dewar 1833: †cairbh; Dwelly 1911: idem.
Dwelly’s (1911) diminutive form †cairbhin ‘little ship’ goes back to Shaw (1780: cairbhin). While SG cairbhin may well have been adopted from Irish, Ir. cairbhin appears to be first listed by O’Reilly (1817) and may itself have been adopted from Shaw, in which case SG cairbhin may be a rare example of the survival of the diminutive suffix -in in Scottish Gaelic, cf. SG cailin ‘maiden, young woman’ (EG cailín) (?cf. also dreollin (sic), s.v. dreòlan).
On the difficulties surrounding reflexes of -ín in Scottish Gaelic, see Ó Maolalaigh 2001, 11 ff.
Dwelly’s †cairbheacan ‘ship-boy’ goes back to MacLeod and Dewar (1833: idem), which in turn goes back to Shaw (1780: cairbhecan [sic]), but it may in fact be a derivative of SG cairb (s.v.), cf. O’Reilly’s cairbeacan.