Page:Alexander Macbain - An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language.djvu/84

 16  ambassador, Ger. amt, official position, etc. Ir. J., 154, 156, has amhas, in G. force.

an, a', the, Ir. an, O. Ir. in (mas. and fem.), a n- (neut.); a t- appears before vowels in the nom. masc. (an t-athair), and it is part of the article stem; a Celtic sendo-s (m.), sendâ (f.), san (n.). Sendo-s is composed of two pronominal roots, dividing into sen-do-; sen, judging by the neuter san, is a fixed neuter nom. or acc. from the Celtic root se (I. E. sjo, beside so-, allied to Ag. S. se, the, seó, now she. The -do- of sendo-s has been referred by Thurneysen and Brugmann to the pron. root to- (Eng. tha-t, Gr. τó); it is suggested that to- may have degenerated into do- before it was stuck to the fixed form sen. Sen-to- could not, on any principle otherwise, whether of accentuation or what not, produce the historical forms.  It is best to revert to the older etymology, and refer do- to the pronominal root appearing in the Latin fixed cases (enclitic) -dam, -dem, (qui-dam, i-dem, etc.), the Gr. δέ, -δε (as in ὅ-δε, this), Ch. Sl. da, he.  The difference, then, between Gr. ὅ-δε and Gaelic sen-do-s is this: the Gr. inflects