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368 do. 34, l. 4, though the rhyming word is kyvẏeith; but weithret is also a genuine variant rh. with kiwet ib. l. 9. Possibly the ‑r- was first lost in the compound *gwreithret by dissim. The ‑ur added to *gwreith ‘work’ may have come from the synonymous llafur < Lat. labōrem. The form *gwreithur might easily have become gwneithur by dissim. § 102 iii (2), as it was dissimilated to gwruthyl in Corn. The ‑n- might spread from this to the verb; but as gw̯n- is slightly easier than gw̯r- the change may have taken place in the vb. itself owing to its frequent occurrence. The old v.n. gweith with lost ‑r- came to be dissociated from the vb., and gwneuthur remained the only v.n. Ultimately from gwaith ‘work’ a new denom. gweithiaf ‘I work’ was formed, with gweithio ‘to work’ as v.n.—gweith ‘battle’ < *u̯iktā (: Ir. fichim ‘I fight’, Lat. vinco) is a different word.

deuaf is a compound of the verb ‘to be’, as seen in the v.n. dy-fod. The prefix is *do- which appears regularly as dy- before a cons.—The pres. is future in meaning, and comes from the fut. *esō; thus *dó esō > *deu, which was made into deu-af § 75 ii (2), so the 2nd sg.; the 3rd sg. *do eset gave daw or do see ib. The pres. deuaf would be in O.W. *doüam; under the influence of 3rd sg. do this became *do-am > Ml. W. doaf; thus deu- and do- became the stems of the pres. and impf.; and deu- was even substituted for dỿ- in some other tenses as deu-bi for dy-bi, v (4). [Later the 3rd sg. daw was made a stem in S.W. dialects, and dawaf, dawai, etc. occur in late .]

Other tenses contain the b- forms of the vb. ‘to be’; the fut. dyvyẟ, dyvi, pres. subj. dyvo, dyffo are regular; the perf. might be either dyvu < *do-(be-)baue or dybu < *do‑b’baue; from the latter the ‑b- spread to other tenses. The perf. dyvu or dybu was supplanted, see vi (4), by a new perf. formed in imitation of aeth but with the vowels of the pres. stems deu‑, do‑; thus deuth, doeth; and by a new second perf. similarly modelled on eẟyw, which like eẟyw itself became obsolete in Ml. W.

The impv. of deuaf was dos, which was transferred to af, see viii (1). The Corn. forms are dus, dues, des, the Bret. is deuz. It is clearly impossible to equate these forms either with one another or with dos. What has taken place is that the vowel of other forms, especially the 2nd pl., has been substituted for the original vowel; thus W. dos after do-wch, Corn. dues after duech, des after de-uch, Bret. deuz after deu-it ‘come ye’; a late example is W. dial. (to a child) dows yma ‘come here’ after dowch. This leaves Corn. dus as the unaltered form; dus < *doistǖd < *do estōd: Lat. estōd, estō, Gk. 🇬🇷.

The loss of dos to deuaf was supplied by the impv. of verbs meaning ‘come’ from √reg̑‑: Ir. do-rega ‘he will come’; thus dabre < *dabbirigā < *do-ambi-reg-ā; dy-re < *do-rigā < *do-reg-ā. The forms with ‑d are generally referred to √ret- ‘run’; but it would be more satisfactory if they could be connected with the above. Ir. tair ‘come’ < *to-reg shows *reg- athematic; to athematic stems a 2nd