My friend (fy ffrind) Maegan, whom I met two summers ago on the Welsh Language Course (Cwrs Cymraeg) in Iowa, recently announced her triumph in receiving a check for an article published last spring. I've just finished reading it, and I liked it so much that I decided to share it as a New Year's Day gift to my readers, and as additional publicity for Maegan because nascent professional writers need to get their words out. Please click on this link to read her story, and then rejoin me afterward, please.
As a Welsh descendant and learner, Maegan's paean to sturdiness immediately sent me into my various Welsh dictionaries, virtual and tangible, to discover what treasures awaited. According to H. Meurig Evans' Hippocrene Standard Dictionary, "sturdiness" is rendered as either cadernid or cryfder, or adjectivally as cadarn or cryf.
("Good Cryf!" I exclaimed, in Charlie Brownish Welsh, ignoring the phonological fact that a single f is pronounced as the English v.)
Going over to the Welsh side of words, I found that the "back-to-English" meanings of cryf were prosaic, although I did learn that cryf has a feminine counterpart, cref (rhymes with breve): cryf: strong, powerful; cryfder: strength, etc.
Cadarn, however, had some convivial cognates: strong, firm, and mighty; cadarnhad: affirmation and confirmation; cadarnhaol: affirmative, emphatic, positive; and the verb cadarnhau: to strengthen, to confirm. Those are a host of meanings which make of "sturdiness" a force with which to reckon.
Next stop, the virtual world and this link, which supplied the variant, talgryf, and these meanings: sturdy, robust (not Maegan's preferred meaning), and-- ah ha!-- impudent!
(There were other constellations of meanings here, too, for those who wish to venture there.)
All of which leads me to wish you all not only a Happy New Year but a Sturdy New Year in all its varieties!
And special thanks to Nuala, another Celtic cousin of the Irish Gaelic branch, whose champagne is helping Ingrid and me toast and celebrate this Sturdy New Year's Day!
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