S. #maew n. “gull” (Category: Gull, Petrel)
A noun for “gull” first appearing as N. maew in The Etymologies of the 1930s derived from the root ᴹ√MIW¹ “whine” (Ety/MIW). It appeared in later notes as an archaic genitive plural maewion in the phrase S. †glim maewion “(the) voices of gulls” (PE17/97). Its class plural mewrim seems to have appeared in S. Ras Mewrim “*Cape of the Gulls”, an alternate name for S. Bar-in-Mŷl “Home of the Gulls” (WJ/190). If so, the vowel e would be the result of the sound change whereby ae sometimes became e in polysyllables.
References ✧ PE17/97; WJ/190
Inflections
| Mewrim | class-plural | ✧ WJ/190 | |
| maewia | old-genitive | ✧ PE17/97 | |
| maewion | old-genitive plural | “of gulls” | ✧ PE17/97 |
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