pen(n) ‘head’; spv. pennaf ‘chief’; also in Ml. and Early Mn. W. cpv. pennach Ỻ.A. 89, G.Gl. p 83/58 ‘higher, superior’; § 89 iii.
rhad ‘gift, grace’, having become an adj. ‘cheap’ from the phrase yn rhad ‘gratis’, is compared regularly.
rhad < *prət‑: rhann, Skr. pūrtám ‘reward’; see rhaid above.
diwedd ‘end’; spv. diwaethaf ‘last’ Ỻ.A. 7, r.p. 1195, 1249, 1298, p 16/19 r., 1 Petr i 5 by R.D. (in Wm.S.); diwethaf Ỻ.A. 43, 59, p 14/11 r., a.l. i 4, 48, 50, Matt. xx 8 Wm.S.; so in Es. ii 2, xlviii 12, Jer. xxiii 20 in 1620; but generally in 1620, and everywhere in late bibles, diweddaf.
a.l. i 48 dẏuedaf does not imply ẟ, as we have pemdec for pymtheg on the same page. The form diweddaf seems to come from Wm.S.’s dyweddaf Matt. xxvii 64; and as it seemed to be “regular” it ousted the traditional forms in the written lang. of the 19th cent.; but the spoken forms are dw̯aetha’ (Powys), dw͡ytha’ (Gwyn.), and dw̯etha’ (S.W.).
- Caned dy feirdd—cyntaf fûm,
- A diwaethaf y deuthum.—T.A., a 14901/26.
‘Let thy bards sing—I was the first [of them], and I have come last’.
The O.W. diued b.s.ch. 2 and Bret. divez, Corn. dewedh, Ir. diad, dead show that the noun diwedd cannot be for *diwaedd; on the other hand diwaethaf cannot well be for diwethaf. The explanation of the former seems to be that it comes from an intensified form with *‑u̯o‑, which survived only in the spv.; thus diwaethaf < *diw̯oeẟ-haf < *dī-u̯o-(u̯)ed-isamo‑s, cf. gwaethaf (5) above.
diwedd is ‘end’ in the sense of ‘close, conclusion’, not a geometrical term; hence from *dī- ‘out’ + u̯ed‑, √u̯edh- ‘conduct, lead’: Lith. vedù ‘I conduct, lead’, E. wed, etc., cf. W. gor-ẟiw̯eẟaf ‘I overtake’.
(2) Many other cases occur in Ml. W.: gurhaw (≡ gwrhaf) b.b. 41 ‘most manly’; amserach w.m. 9, r.m. 6 ‘more timely’; llessach w.m. 17, r.m. 11 ‘more beneficial’ (lles ‘benefit’); dewissach c.m. 11 ‘preferable’ (dewis ‘choice’ noun); pennadurẏaf do. 8 ‘most princely’; ky vawhet R.M. 149 ‘as cowardly’, bawaf r.p. 1278 ‘most vile’ (baw ‘dirt’).
ii (1) Equative adjectives are formed from many nouns by prefixing cỿf‑, cỿm‑, (as cyfled, cymaint); thus kyfliw r.b.b. 179 ‘of the same colour’; kyvurẟ w.m. 75 ‘of the same rank’;
