Cook, Brian, “Dog barks, otter dens, and the origin of ‘letter’ in Auraicept na n-éces”, North American Journal of Celtic Studies 4:2 (2020): 215–236.
- journal article
In this article, I examine the unique etymology for the word littir ‘letter’ as recorded in Auraicept na n-éces. Comparing the Auraicept to analogous grammatical commentaries on Donatus with connections to medieval Irish scholarship, I demonstrate that, while there are three standard etymologies for ‘letter’, the Auraicept appears to only record two of them, i.e., that letters are named from either their providing a road for readers to follow, or their being erased from wax tablets. In place of the third, the Auraicept provides an extended meditation on animal dens located on the seashore. After a discussion that shows how each part of the Auraicept's extended etymology—the animal, the animal's den, and the name Molossus—suggests Latin words phonologically similar to littir, I demonstrate how reading these echo words back into the etymology results in the expected third common etymology for 'letter': that letters are so called because they are repeated in reading.
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