Definitions
Sorry, no definitions found. Check out and contribute to the discussion of this word!
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word cabbyl.
Examples
Sorry, no example sentences found.
chained_bear commented on the word cabbyl
Manx, "horse."
April 23, 2009
yarb commented on the word cabbyl
Manx showing a Latin gleaning here. I noticed recently that the welsh for "goat" was gaffran, which is presumably linked to the Latin root. I wonder how big the Latin impact on these Celtic languages was, and what the equivalent term was before the Romans came along.
April 23, 2009
Prolagus commented on the word cabbyl
I came to this page to say that is sounded a lot like caballus, then I saw yarb's comment.
April 23, 2009
qroqqa commented on the word cabbyl
The normal Welsh for "goat" is gafr. The interrelationships between the Celtic and Italic words here are not obvious: Don Ringe says the Celtic original of ceffyl "horse" seems to have gone from Latin to Celtic because it doesn't match up the way it would if it was a cognate, but this is uncertain. It is also unclear whether Italic and Celtic formed a sub-branch of IE and therefore particularly shared inherited vocabulary.
April 23, 2009
yarb commented on the word cabbyl
Thanks qroqqa. Those Celts are a damnably obscure lot, aren't they.
Actually I thought it was "gafr" that I'd heard, but when I googled lazily to confirm all I got was "gaffran". What is that, the plural?
April 23, 2009
wytukaze commented on the word cabbyl
For completeness' sake, the Irish and Scottish Gaelic (the closest languages to Manx) cognates are both capall (though the ScG has undergone a bit of sense narrowing, so it just refers to colts now - the normal word being each, which is also valid in Irish). The Welsh, ceffyl as qroqqa mentions, is also cognate, obviously, but I'm not aware of a cognate in the other two Brythonic languages, Breton and Cornish; the usual words are marc'h and margh respectively (and Welsh has march). If anyone knows of cognates, I'd be interested.
As for "gaffran", yarb, I don't know it and neither does my Welsh dictionary. The plural of gafr is geifr.
April 23, 2009
hernesheir commented on the word cabbyl
cf. Latin capra, Spanish cabra. In historical linguistics, c's and g's are closely related (the latter voiced, the former unvoiced); ditto f's and b's. I wouldn't be surprised if both cabbyl and gafr both relate to, or to a coeval cognate of the Latin capra.
April 23, 2009