cumhal

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English

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Etymology

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From Irish cumhal.

Noun

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cumhal (plural cumhals)

  1. (historical) An Irish unit of account equivalent to the theoretical value of a bondmaid.

Irish

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Etymology

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From Old Irish cumal.[1]

Noun

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cumhal f (genitive singular cumhaile, nominative plural cumhala)

  1. bondmaid
    • 1892, William Ridgeway, The Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards (quotation in English and Irish; overall work in English), page 33:
      As elsewhere, however, the slave formed occasionally the highest unit, and was reckoned nominally at three cows. The slave woman (cumhal, ancilla in Latin writers) was in course of time used as a mere unit of account.
  2. a unit of account equivalent to the theoretical value of a bondmaid
    • 1922, R. A. Stewart Macalister, “The Valuation and Tenure of Property”, in Ireland[1] (quotation in English and Irish; overall work in English), page 102:
      For yet higher sums the cumhal (pron. cūwal, the u being nasalised) or bondsmaid was the unit, and here again we meet with a considerable range of values. The normal value of the cumhal... seems to have been 10 sets, the set being further defined as of the second class... But in some passages we read of a cumhal worth 3 sets, and even only one; so that there is a wide range of uncertainty as to valuation in the absence of knowledge that was imparted traditionally.
    • 2013, Laurence Ginnell, The Brehon Laws: A Legal Handbook (quotation in English and Irish; overall work in English), page 80:
      The measures by which the actual quantities in each case were ascertained were the cumhal (pronounced cooal) and the sed (pronounced shed)... Cumhal means, literally, a bond-maid or female slave; but in the laws it is never used in any other sense than as a measure of quantity, or rather of value, perhaps what was originally supposed to equal the value of such a slave. As applied to land (tircumhat), it meant the usufruct for one year of about twenty acres, less or more, according as the land was good or bad... As applied to things other than land, cumhal meant the value of three cows.

Declension

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Mutation

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Irish mutation
Radical Lenition Eclipsis
cumhal chumhal gcumhal
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.

References

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  1. ^ Gregory Toner, Sharon Arbuthnot, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Dagmar Wodtko, editors (2019), “1 cumal”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

Further reading

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