subae

Old Irish

Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *subwiyom, from *su- (“good”) +‎ *-bwi- (“being”) +‎ *-om (verbal noun suffix), literally “being good”. Compare the formation of the antonym dubae (“sorrow, grief”, literally “being bad”).^[1]

Noun

subae n

joy, pleasure, happiness, merriment
- c. 808, Félire Oengusso, April 1; republished as Whitley Stokes, transl., Félire Óengusso Céli Dé: The Martyrology of Oengus the Culdee, Harrison & Sons, 1905:
  co ngaib as mó subae: féil de félib Máire.
  [Ambrose] takes what is greater happiness - one of Mary's feasts.
- c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 146^d2
  "a subae" glosses iubelatio
- c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 47^d2
  "int suibi" glosses iubelationis

Inflection

Neuter io-stem
	Singular	Dual	Plural
Nominative	subae^N	—	—
Vocative	subae^N	—	—
Accusative	subae^N	—	—
Genitive	subai^L	—	—
Dative	subu^L	—	—
Initial mutations of a following adjective: ^H = triggers aspiration ^L = triggers lenition ^N = triggers nasalization

Antonyms

dubae (“grief”)

Derived terms

subach

Descendants

Irish: subha (“joy”)

Mutation

Mutation of *subae*
radical	lenition	nasalization
subae	ṡubae	unchanged

Note: Certain mutated forms of some words can never occur in Old Irish.
All possible mutated forms are displayed for convenience.

References

^ Uhlich, Jurgen (2002) “Verbal governing compounds (synthetics) in Early Irish and other Celtic languages”, in Transactions of the Philological Society, volume 100, number 3, Wiley, →DOI, →ISSN, pages 403–433