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228 O.E. ford: i ffwrdd ‘away’;—bord ‘board, table’ < M.E. bord: bwrdd id. < O.E. bord.

i. The gender of a compound noun is generally that of its subordinating element; thus eluséndy ‘almshouse’ m. like ty ‘house’, this being the subordinating, and elusen the subordinate element. So gwínllan ‘vineyard’ f. like llan; canhẃyllbren ‘candlestick’ m. like pren.

The above rule also holds for improper compounds, § 46, in which the subordinating element comes first; thus tréf-tad ‘heritage’ f.; dỿ́dd-brawd ‘day of judgement’ m.; pónt-bren ‘wooden bridge’ f.; pén-cerdd ‘chief of song’ m.

i. There are many nouns of vacillating or uncertain gender. Some of them are old neuters, like braich from Lat. bracchium. In other cases the uncertainty is due to the action of analogy.

The gender sometimes varies according to meaning or use:—golwg ‘sight’ m., as in golwg byr ‘short sight’ (but f. in Ỻ.A. 107): golwg ‘appearance’ f., as in teg yr olwg ‘fair to see’;—bath or math ‘kind’ m., as dau fath ‘two kinds’: with the art. f., as y fath ‘the kind’, y fath beth ‘the kind of thing’;—man ‘spot’ m., as ẏ’r ẟeu van gochẏon. 140 ‘to the two red spots’, man gwan ‘weak spot’: man ‘place’ f. generally as in Matt, xxviii 6, often m. as in Jer. vii 3; note yn y fan ‘immediately’, yn y man ‘by and by’;—to ‘roof’ m. as in aderyn y to ‘sparrow’: to ‘generation’ sometimes f., as in L.G.C. 204;—coes ‘leg’ f.: coes ‘stalk’ or ‘handle’ of a spade, etc. (where there is only one) m., dim. coesyn m.—Unrelated pairs: gwaith ‘work’ m., gwaith ‘fois’ f., as in dwy waith ‘twice’; llif m., llif f.; mil m., mil f.; llith m., llith f.; § 140 i.

Some nouns have different genders in Ml. and Mn. W. This is sometimes due to a break in the tradition owing to the word becoming obsolete in the spoken language; in other cases it is due to, or has been helped by, analogy. Early Mn. W. generally agrees with Ml. W.; the break comes in the Late Mn. period.