Welsh

How to spell welsh

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce welsh

What does welsh mean?

1. adjectiveRelating to Wales, its people, its language, or its culture.

Welsh in a sentence

• The welsh valleys are dotted with old mining towns.

• She signed up for an evening class to learn the welsh language.

Where does welsh come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from Old English, where Wealh meant a foreigner and specifically a Celt or a Briton, and the related adjective Wælisc described anything belonging to those people. The Anglo-Saxons inherited the term from Proto-Germanic walhaz, a name they had originally borrowed for a Celtic tribe known to the Romans as the Volcae, so the sense literally grew from 'one of those foreign Celtic speakers'. As the Germanic settlers pushed west, they applied the label to the native Britons of what is now Wales, and the same root survives hidden inside place names such as Cornwall and even the surname Wallace. The verb sense, meaning to cheat by not paying a debt, especially a racing or betting debt, appeared in English only in the nineteenth century; its exact origin is debated, and the older spelling welch is also recorded, so confidence in that strand is low. Because the modern spelling keeps the soft -sh ending rather than the harder -ch, writers sometimes hesitate between welsh and welch.

How the word is built

• From Old English Wealh (foreigner, Celt), no internal prefix or suffix; the modern -sh ending preserves the old adjectival ending -isc