A Guide to eDIL
Hi everyone! Today I’ll be introducing you all to an incredibly useful online resource, that I myself avail of daily as a student! The Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language, or eDIL for short is a historical dictionary of Irish, specifically Old and Medieval Irish. Citations found in eDIL cover the language from some of the earliest evidence we have, ranging from the 7th century to the mid 17th century, with most content available from the 12th and 13th centuries.
eDIL was originally published as a physical dictionary starting in 1913, and has been an indispensable tool for scholars of the language ever since. eDIL has been consistently updated over the years and has seen over 10,000 changes since its digitisation in 2003 alone! On top of that, the original print is available to access on the eDIL site to make sure that even the oldest of references from the original physical book can still be sourced.
eDIL is an absolutely crucial for educators, students – like myself! – and simply those just interested in Old Irish. The digitisation of this dictionary has been a game changer in making the study of Old Irish accessible to everyone, all over the world.
Getting Started – How to Use eDIL
Like any other dictionary you search using the search bar at the top any Old or Medieval Irish word that you’re curious about. On the left side here we can see the headword in black and bold. This is the term in its basic form.
If you want to refer to an entry in an essay or article, you can use the headword or alternatively, use the number seen below it as a link, like this: https://dil.ie/29673. This number is a permanent URL that even if the headword is modified at some point in the future, the URL will stay the same so no one gets confused. Brilliant, isn’t it?
In some entries there are numbers preceding the headwords. It is like this that entries of homonyms are distinguished. Make sure to double check you have the right definition of a homonym when referencing…!
In some headwords you might find question marks. If there is a question mark before a headword, like below, it means that there is some doubt as to whether this is a genuine word or not, as opposed to perhaps a scribal error or an editor’s misunderstanding!
Question marks in brackets after the headword means that it’s not certain if the given form is the correct basic form that dictionaries usually provide. In Old Irish’s case, the basic form of a noun is the nominative singular, and the 3rd person singular for verbs.
In the cases of some words, the spelling may have varied throughout different periods of time, and those different forms are usually noted in an eDIL entry. As we can see here in the entry for the word ‘acallam’ for example, the editors have added a note to specify what the Old Irish form is.
Deciphering the Structure of an eDIL Entry
A fantastic feature of this dictionary is that the different elements of the entries are colour-coded, so that the results can be deciphered at a glance.
Definitions of a word are seen in bold and green. Some words like cráeb have a variety of senses as per the list seen below, but the main or primary sense will always be at the top of the entry.
Editors have not always provided definitions in this dictionary, and they sometimes only ever refer you to another word of the same meaning. We can see this happen with the word ‘doṡásta’, where in place of a definition is prec. (‘preceding’). This is a lefacy of the physical printed dictionary where of course, readers only had to cast their eyes upwards and see the preceding definition. By clicking on prec., see for yourself what ‘doṡásta’ means!
Green italics are used for translations. English translations of the Irish texts are provided more often than not nowadays at eDIL, but this wasn’t the case back in the day of the physical copy. Note – translations taken from published editions are in single inverted commas… if there are no nverted commas then that means the translation you are looking at was provided by the editors of eDIL!
Citations in Irish from all the various texts and manuscripts used to build this dictionary will be seen in black Roman type. I can say firsthand that this feature is brilliant for students or Old Irish to see how certain terms were used in context. Citations to existing entries aren’t updated very frequently, only in the event that they add something new to the entry, such as pushing the date of its attestations backwards or forwards in time.
The original editors of eDIL seemed to have made it a rule to place glosses at the start of an entry. Therefore the first citations will usually come from relatively dependable sources of Early Irish, such as the Würzburg or Milan Glosses from the 8th and 9th centuries respectively.
Let’s take a look now at the grammatical side of things. Luckily for us, grammatical abbreviations in eDIL are also colour-coded and presented in a clear and comprehensible manner. Most of these abbreviations are self-explanatory, such as n for noun, vn for verbal noun and so forth. Let’s take the word ‘gabál’ for example. We can see that ‘gabál’ is a noun of the á-stem group. F, N and S here indicate the feminine nominative singular form. G. S. stands for genitive singular. Lastly we’re informed that the headword, ‘gabál’ is the verb noun of the verb ‘gaibid’.
Searching on eDIL
When using the searchbar at the top of the homepage you have the option to toggle between OFF and ON on the Headword Only Filter.
If you turn this filter ON, only Headwords including the word you search will appear. If it’s OFF, results will show every singel instance of this word on the site, including mentions in other entries’ citations. Depending on what you’re looking for, both are great!
You can also conduct an anomaly detection search by replacing any letter ofa word with an asterisk. You can use this trick if you’re looking for a word that tends to have multiple spelling variations or if you’re looking for multiple mutations of a word. Look for yourself how many variations of the word for ‘year’ we can find when you search ‘bliad*’!
Bibliography and Sources
There are also ways to investigate further into the sources of the citations listed under the eDIL entries. In an entry, sources follow each citation in bold and blue. If you click on that source, a window will pop up giving you more information about that particular manuscript or text.
You can also access a full bibliography by clicking on the Bibliography tab at the top of the webpage. Here you can find an alphabetical list of all the texts, manuscripts, and more used in the creation of this dictionary!