CLAIM / COUNTERCLAIM / LIMITRECORD 666
DISPUTE
RECORD.
One scholarly question. Every attached source. The present editorial state, without pretending the last word has been written.
resolvedprobable
Does the contrast miscais prove that bare cais originally meant love?
No. The contrast is evidence that some contexts oppose the forms, but prefixal morphology and a translated contrast do not by themselves recover the oldest sense of bare cais.
WORD UNDER REVIEWDISPUTE 666
cais
not directly recoverable · Middle Irish noun
eDIL separates two Irish headwords written cais. The first, also recorded as caise, is explicitly explained both as love and as hate; its cited passages and glossary equations range from searc and grádh "love" to miscais and mioscais "hatred", with context deciding individual readings. One Éigse line is tentatively translated so that the same visible form occurs on both sides: "my love ... is met by hatred(?)". The question mark matters. The second eDIL headword cais means "eye" and is excluded from this semantic lineage. These records establish a remarkable lexicographic opposition, not one timeless essence, a chronology from love to hate, or proof that every occurrence belongs to one historically indivisible sense. John T. Koch compares the noun with Proto-Celtic *katsi- < *kad-t/si- and a wider *kad- family, but that ancestry and its proposed Germanic comparison remain open. eDIL itself generally supplies etymologies only selectively. No manuscript pixels were directly inspected, no earliest-use or historical-frequency claim is made, and no exact pronunciation is invented.
01DIRECT CLAIM EVIDENCE
1 SOURCES WITH A STANCE
A citation is not a vote. Each record says whether the work supports, challenges, contradicts, or contextualizes the position—and identifies the exact locus used.
SOURCE 01supportshistorical dictionary
eDIL — 1 cais, noun explained as both love and hate
Documents the contrast without dating or explaining its morphological history.
cin cais, cin miscais; ni tongar ar cais ... na miscais; cen cais, cen miscais- AUTHOR / EDITOR
- Royal Irish Academy · eDIL editors
- YEAR
- 2026
- PUBLISHER
- Royal Irish Academy
02 / EDITORIAL STATE
THE CURRENT RECORD IS RESOLVED.
- CONFIDENCE
- probable
- STATUS
- resolved
- LEGACY SOURCE SUMMARY
- eDIL supplies the paired forms without a dated semantic derivation.
RESOLUTION NOTEThe graph records the contrast and leaves chronological priority unknown.