cía

From Old Irish cía, from Proto-Celtic *kʷēs (compare Welsh pwy), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷis.

cía

1. (interrogative) who?
   • c. 1000, The Tale of Mac Da Thó's Pig, section 3, published in Irische Teste, vol. 1 (1880), edited by Ernst Windisch:

     Tabair dóibsium dib línaib, cumma cía thóetsat imbi.

     Give it to them both, it doesn’t matter who will fall because of it.

• Irish: cé
• Scottish Gaelic: cò
• Manx: quoi

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “1 cía”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language

• ce, ci, cia

• IPA^(key): /kʲiːa̯/

From Proto-Celtic *kʷēs (compare Welsh pwy), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷis.

cía (neuter cid, plural citné or cisné, triggers /h/-prothesis before vowels)

1. (interrogative) who? what?
   • c. 700, Críth Gablach, published in Críth Gablach (1941, Dublin: Stationery Office), edited by Daniel Anthony Binchy, p. 21, paragraph 40, line 536

     Cía cethrar? Rí ⁊ brithem ⁊ dias i manchuini.

     Who are the four people? A king, judge, and two others in service.

   • c. 800–825, Diarmait, Milan Glosses on the Psalms, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1987, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. I, pp. 7–483, Ml. 35^a17

     Air cía dunaibhí do·foirmsed?

     For to whom would he add?

     (literally, “For who are the ones to whom he would add?”)

2. (indefinite) whoever, whatever

The stressed interrogative pronoun cía and its feminine, neuter, and plural counterparts either take a relative clause describing an action involving the noun to be identified or a substantive indicating whose identity is to be found. No copula is used in the latter case.

Gender disagreement where the gender-inflected forms fail to agree in gender with their predicated noun occurs occasionally (in these cases often defaulting to cía), and in the case of some words like airm f (“place”), it occurs regularly.

• Irish: cé
• Scottish Gaelic: cò
• Manx: quoi

cía (feminine cesí or cessi or cisí, neuter cid, plural citné or cisné)

1. what, whatever
   • c. 775, Táin Bó Fraích from the Book of Leinster, published in Táin bó Fraích (1974, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited by Wolfgang Meid, line 299

     As·biurt-sa frie: "Cía lóg rom·bia latt ara fagbáil?" As·bert-si frim-sa dom·bérad seirc mblíadnae dam-sa.

     I said to her, "what reward will I have for finding it?" She said to me that she would give me [her] love in one year.

   • c. 845, St Gall Glosses on Priscian, published in Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus (reprinted 1975, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies), edited and with translations by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan, vol. II, pp. 49–224, Sg. 26^a6

     ɔ eperthae cía aiccent ⁊ cisí aimser derb thechtas

     so that it might be said what accent and what certain time it has

cía

1. wherever
2. however

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “1 cía”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
• Thurneysen, Rudolf (1940, reprinted 2003), D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin, transl., A Grammar of Old Irish, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, →ISBN, §§ 456–57, pages 286–87

Uncertain; possibly from the pronoun (Etymology 1).

cía (triggers lenition)

1. although
2. if, even if
3. that (introducing a noun clause)

For quotations using this term, see Citations:cía.

• Middle Irish: cía
  • Irish: cé
  • Scottish Gaelic: cò
  • Manx: quoi

• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “2 cía”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
• Thurneysen, Rudolf (1940, reprinted 2003), D. A. Binchy and Osborn Bergin, transl., A Grammar of Old Irish, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, →ISBN, §§ 909–10, pages 561–63

• IPA^(key): (Spain) /ˈθia/ [ˈθi.a]
• IPA^(key): (Latin America) /ˈsia/ [ˈsi.a]
• Rhymes: -ia
• Syllabification: cí‧a

cía

1. inflection of ciar:
   1. third-person singular present indicative
   2. second-person singular imperative