Welsh Word of the Day: Tenau (thin)

I always finds words in new languages easier to learn when they begin with the same letter as their equivalent does in a language I already speak – it just makes forming that connection in the brain a little simpler.

Tenau in Welsh means thin, so it looks pretty similar to the English word. This isn’t because it’s a loan word or even because both come from the same Latin root. In fact, the two words have maintained their similarity all the way from their origin in proto-Indo-European, which probably looked and sounded something like *tenhus.

The pronunciation of tenau can vary quite a bit. Above is standard, but sometimes the final au sound is abbreviated to e or a, and also the first vowel sound tends to be longer in South Wales.

There is a plural form of tenau, which teneuon. So for example, thin men would be dynion teneuon. However, like many plural adjectives in Welsh, it is often missed out in speech; dynion tenau is thus also usually considered acceptable outside of super formal contexts.

As thin is teneued, thinner is teneuach, and thinnest is teneuaf. Notice that in all these, and in the plural too, the au has changed to eu. Since Welsh is a phonetic language, the pronunciation changes too to reflect this.

Because they come from the same root, it’s no surprise that tenau and thin are used in much the same way. To start with, they are both antonyms of tew (fat). In Welsh we also have the word main for this, meaning thin, slender, or fine. And if you want to say that someone or something has grown thinner, you can use the verbal forms teneuo or meinhau.

Something can also be tenau as opposed to trwchus (thick), like tafell denau o deisen (a thin slice of cake). Sometimes cul (narrow) serves as an antonym to this in Welsh. Interestingly, cul was historically used by Welsh farmers to describe anifeiliaid teneuon (thin animals).

On a similar bwyd (food)-related note, tenau can be used to describe hylif (liquid) that is particularly dyfrllyd (watery) and gwan (weak), as in a cawl tenau (thin soup).

Tenau and thin can mean prin (sparse) – think of a cynulleidfa tenau (thin house) in theatre. A person’s gwallt (hair) can also be tenau in this way!

It can be used in a variety of ways to mean that something is not particularly sylweddol (substantial). Shallow soil is pridd tenau. You could say that a ffrog (dress) is tenau (thin) either because it has started to wear out and become hendraul (threadbare), or because it has always been made of a defnydd tenau (thin material).

And lastly, on a metaphorical level, something could be described as tenau (thin) because it’s superficial, meaningless, or unimportant. This may be the root of the expression yn dew ac yn denau (fat and thin) used to describe a piece of information as common knowledge.

Not all idiomatic senses of thin make sense for tenau, though. For example, you would probably describe your amenydd (patience) as bron i ben (almost up) rather than wearing thin. And the thin end of the wedge is blaen y gyllell (the front of the knife).

But the most common way in which most of us want to use the word tenau is to describe a person. In Welsh there are a lot of colourful, idiomatic ways of doing this. Here are a few, with their literal translations alongside them:

• tenau fel cribin = thin like a rake
• fel waffer o denau = like a wafer due to thinness
• fel astell o denau = like a plank due to thinness
• fel sglodyn o denau = like a chip due to thinness
• cyn deneued ag esgyrnyll = as thin as a skeleton, though note that the usual word for skeleton is sgerbwd
• cyn feined â choes robin = as slim as a robin’s leg
• mor denau â glastwr / â llaeth gafr = as thin as milk mixed with water / as goat’s milk
• mor denau â blewyn pen = as thin as a hair from someone’s head
• mor denau â sgimren = as thin as a branch

That’s even before we get into the subject of words that just mean a thin person, like slimyn, sbrigyn, sbrilyn and slentyn. Or, worst of all, a llyngyren (tapeworm)!