Stifter, David and Hayden, Deborah
(2022)
The lexicography and etymology of OIr. eclas.
North American Journal of Celtic Studies, 6 (2).
pp. 236-250.
ISSN 2472-7482
(Submitted)
Abstract
This article examines the existing lexicographical evidence for the rare Irish word eclas,
typically translated as ‘stomach’ or ‘gizzard’, and presents some hitherto unnoticed
attestations of this term from a large collection of Irish medical remedies now preserved in
two sixteenth-century manuscripts. The new data allow better insights into the historical
phonology and morphology of OIr. eclas and its Breton cognate elas, and make it possible to
set up an Indo-European etymology for it and the related word glas in Welsh and Cornish.
This reconstruction *(eg̑ʰs)-gʰl̥H-ST-o/eh₂- also has repercussions for the reconstruction of
words for ‘digestive organs’ in other Indo-European languages. Even though eclas occurs as
an equivalent for gaile ‘stomach’ in the context of late-medieval medical writing, it is argued
that it probably originally referred to some other internal organ in the vicinity of the stomach,
possibly the ‘oesophagus’
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