indén

• indéin (in St. Gall glosses)

From Proto-Celtic *andegʷnā, from *ande- (whence also Old Irish ind-) + Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰen- (“to strike”). Brittonic cognates include Old Welsh ennian (Welsh einion), Old Cornish ennian (Cornish anwan), and Middle Breton anneffn (Breton annev).

Stokes and Pedersen's treatment of this word as an i-stem noun is incorrect, given the existence of nominative singular indén and genitive plural indéon.

Some form of this etymology can be traced back to Stokes, who reconstructs Proto-Celtic *andebnis, from *ande- + the root of benaid (“to strike”).^[1] However, modern scholarship holds that benaid comes from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyh₂- (“to strike, hit”) and that the n is part of the present suffix, not part of the root. On the other hand, Stokes’ etymology of benaid lists Sanskrit हन्ति (hanti, “to strike, smite”) and Ancient Greek θείνω (theínō, “to strike, wound”) as cognates, meaning he associated it with Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰen- (“to strike, kill”) (the source of gonaid (“to wound”)).^[2]

The stem *andegʷn- is expected to give indén when unpalatalized (such as in the nominative singular), which is attested in the Eriugena glosses. The stem allomorph *indíuin- with raising and palatalization is the expected outcome in the dative and genitive singular, and appears as expected in Sanas Cormaic and a gloss to the Cáin Ónae. The form *indéoin with palatalization but not raising, which also appears in Middle Irish inneóin and Modern Irish inneoin, was originally solely the accusative singular.

The form indéin (which occurs only once in the St. Gall glosses) is due to a total generalization of the é from the nominative (singular and plural) and dative plural across the entire paradigm, followed by the secondary use of the dative singular for the nominative singular as typical for an ā-stem.

Alternatively, Pedersen reconstructs Proto-Indo-European *n̥dʰi-ponis^[3] (giving Proto-Celtic *andeɸonis in our notation), which would be cognate with Lithuanian pi̇̀nti (“to plait”), Old Church Slavonic пѧти (pęti, “to tie, fix”), Ancient Greek πένομαι (pénomai, “to toil, labor”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)penh₁- (“to twist, weave”). However, this connection is semantically less plausible than the connection with verbs meaning “strike, hit”, and the appearance of the form indén in the Eriugena glosses makes this etymology phonetically impossible.

• IPA^(key): /ˈin̠ʲ.d̠ʲeːn/

indén f

1. anvil
   • c. 845, St Gall Glosses on Priscian, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1975, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. II, pp. 49–224, Sg. 110^b1

     indéin [translating incus] ― anvil

2. griddle, gridiron
   • John Scottus Eriugena, c. 9th century Glossae divinae historiae, folio 111r, line 9

     graticula .i. indén ― griddle

ā-stem inflection is confirmed by the genitive plural indéon found in Hail Brigit.

This is the original declension:

The vocalism of the second syllable was highly vulnerable to intra-paradigmatic leveling. The St. Gall glosses show generalization of é while Hail Brigit shows the generalization of éo.

• Middle Irish: indeóin, inneóin
  • Irish: inneoin
  • Manx: ingan
  • Scottish Gaelic: innean

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “indeóin”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language