v1.0
Published 01/10/24
duil fhear ‘sulky fellow’. In this form and sense, this word is listed by the Rev. Neil Mackay (1897, 91) of Sutherland, attributing it to the Sutherland poet Rob Donn (1714–1778), deriving it from Ice. dulr m. ‘lazy fellow’. While Cleasby’s (1874) Icelandic dictionary lists Ice. dulr, it is only as an adjective in the sense ‘silent, close’, and collections of Rob Donn’s poetry
Mackay 1829; Morrison 1899; Gunn and Adam 1899.
do not appear to contain the form duil fhear (or even duil-fhear or duilfhear).
McDonald (2009, 350: duilbhearr) compares Dwelly’s (1911) duilbhear ‘sad etc.’, but this is simply a variant of SG duilbhir, the antonym of SG suilbhir ‘cheerful etc.’ While Mackay’s form is recorded as duil-fhear in Dwelly App. (where its Sutherland provenance is noted), it is apparently otherwise unattested.
Mackay’s own listing is preceded by one for duaire (sic) in error for SG duairc ‘oaf etc.’, q.v., and succeeded by one for colbhar (sic, as a noun) in error for calbhar (an adjective) ‘greedy’, and the accuracy of the duil fhear entry might itself be doubted. However, if we assume that Mackay’s duil fhear is a folk-etymological representation of SG *duilear *[ˈd̪̥u̟lɛɾ], *[ˈd̪̥ulɛɾ], or similar, in the sense ‘sulky person’, we might be dealing with a loan-blend in Gaelic from Scots dool, dule [dul] etc. ‘grief, sorrow, misery; suffering’ (SND˄) + the Gaelic agentive suffix -ar.
The nature and origin of the suffix is problematic. The word is associated with Sutherland, where an original -air -[aɾʲ] could yield either -[aɾ] or -[əɾ] or both (cf. SGDS Item 393, Points 139–150); cf. ealbhar, s.v. On confusion between the agentive suffixes -air and -aire -[əɾʲə], see Ó Maolalaigh 2013, 210–13.