New words from Wales added to the Oxford English Dictionary

Emily Price

New words from Wales have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) including the Welsh term for a toast ‘iechyd da’ and the adjective for someone stupid – ‘twp’.

Oxford Languages announced its latest dictionary update on Thursday (September 19) and includes a host of new Welsh words and phrases often borrowed by the English.

Ten Welsh words in total have been added – the oldest of which date all the way back to the 18^th century.

Calennig, a noun first attested in 1749, combines the Welsh word calan, meaning New Year’s Day, or first day of the month, with –ig, a Welsh diminutive suffix or a suffix expressing belonging.

Calan itself comes from the post-classical Latin word *calandae, a variant of the classical Latin calendae, which is also the origin of the English word calendar.

Calennig can simply mean a New Year’s gift, but it can also refer to a Welsh New Year’s custom.

On the morning of New Year’s Day, children go from door to door requesting food, money, or other gifts – and unsurprisingly for Wales, the land of song, these requests are traditionally sung.

Children taking part in this custom typically carry an apple or orange pierced with sticks and decorated with sprigs of herbs or foliage, as well as cloves, nuts, or raisins, so that calennig can also sometimes be used to indicate the decorated apple or orange itself.

Disdain

Other expressions of Welsh origin in this batch are iechyd da (earliest seen in English in 1907) – an exclamation used as a toast or salutation before drinking, meaning ‘good health’ and ych a fi, an interjection expressing disgust or disdain.

Twp has also been added to the dictionary – an adjective used to describe someone or something stupid or idiotic as well as the word Senedd.

Cawl is a traditional Welsh soup typically made with lamb or beef, and vegetables such as leeks, potatoes, swedes, and carrots, while sglods is the Welsh English word for chips or French fries.

Also among the OED’s new additions are Welsh terms of address for one’s grandparents.

Grandmothers in south Wales are called mamgu, while grandfathers are called tadcu.

In north Wales, grandfathers are addressed as taid – its female counterpart, nain, was added to the OED in an earlier update.

The OED is widely regarded as the accepted authority on the English language.

It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and usage of 500,000 words and phrases past and present, from across the English-speaking world.

As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from dictionaries of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings.

You’ll still find present-day meanings in the OED, but you’ll also find the history of individual words, sometimes from as far back as the 11th century, and of the language—traced through 3.5 million quotations, from classic literature and specialist periodicals to film scripts, song lyrics, and social media posts.