corcur

English

Alternative forms

• korkir

Noun

corcur (uncountable)

1. A particular reddish-purple dye.

Old Irish

Alternative forms

• cocuir (St. Gall Priscian glosses misspelling)

Etymology

From Latin purpura. The appearance of /k/ for the original Latin /p/ indicates a very early borrowing before /p/ was reintroduced into Goidelic; probably through a Primitive Irish stage where the Primitive phoneme /kʷ/ was used for this purpose (compare cruimther (“priest”), from Latin presbyter).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈkoɾ.kuɾ/
  • (Blasse) [ˈkoɾ.kuɾ]
  • (Griffith) [ˈkoɾ.køɾ]

Noun

corcur f

1. The colour purple or crimson and their dyes.
   • c. 850-875, Turin Glosses and Scholia on St Mark, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 484–94, Tur. 115

     .i. donaib caircib .i. ar is dilus bis forsnaib caircib do·gnither in chorcur buide.

     From the crags, i.e. because it is from a plant that lives on the crags that the yellowish purple is made.

Inflection

Feminine ā-stem

	singular	dual	plural
nominative	corcurL	—	—
vocative	corcurL	—	—
accusative	corcuirN	—	—
genitive	corcraeH	—	—
dative	corcuirL	—	—

Initial mutations of a following adjective:

• ^H = triggers aspiration
• ^L = triggers lenition
• ^N = triggers nasalization

Derived terms

• corcrae

Descendants

• Middle Irish: corcair
  • Irish: corcair
  • Scottish Gaelic: corcar

Mutation

Mutation of corcur

radical	lenition	nasalization
corcur	chorcur	corcur pronounced with /ɡ-/

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

Further reading

• Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “corcair”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language