Dych chi’n teimlo’n flin? In this question, I could be asking you whether you feel tired, frustrated, angry, or even sorry. It all depends on the context!
The operative word is blin, and it’s our Welsh word of the day today.
blin
angry / sorry
Of course, in the phrase at the beginning of the article, it was actually written flin. That’s just the soft mutation.
I can’t think of any case where you’d need the nasal mutation for this word, but I still include it in these cases, because it’s useful to see how the pattern will apply to other words in the same family… of which there are many!
Soft mutation
flin
Nasal mutation
mlin
Aspirate mutation
N/A
Blin’s etymological origin is uncertain; it doesn’t even seem to have relatives in the other Brittonic languages. The closest is blin in Old Breton, but the word hasn’t survived into the modern language.
In its earliest appearances in the written language, blin means tired. It still technically has this meaning but it’s pretty literary. You are more likely to hear someone use wedi blino (literally has been tired or after tired) or blinedig, but as you can see these both derive from blin itself.
There are also quite a few more colourful ways of saying that you are wedi blino. Here they are with their literal translations.
- wedi blino’n llwyr = completely tired
- wedi blino’n lân = clean tired
- wedi blino’n rhacs = tired into rags
- wedi ymlâdd = has fought
- wedi palo = has been tired out
You can also use blin not for tired, but for tiresome / wearisome, perhaps in the form blinderus. I’ve heard blinedig occasionally used in this way too.
Ar ôl clywed y newyddion, roeddwn i mor flin.
After hearing the news, I was so angry.
Blinderus comes from blinder, a noun form which means tiredness or affliction. It is a pretty broad word which can convey wearisome, tedious, troublesome, or distressing: like blin, exactly what you mean by it will come out in the context.
All these words are extensions of blin, though – so what is someone likely to mean if they say just blin on its own?
Well, it can absolutely be synonymous with wedi blino, blinedig, or blinderus, though it sounds a bit literary in these contexts today. Its most common colloquial sense differs between North and South Wales.
Northerners normally use blin for angry or frustrated, which Southerners may call crac and which generally is dig (anger). That’s why you might hear the phrase blin fel cacwn (as angry as a wasp), a variation on cacwn gwyllt (wasp-wild), which also means very angry.
Dwi’n teimlo’n flin ofnadwy drosti hi.
I feel awfully sorry for her.
Another similar phrase is blin fel tincar (angry like a tinker). I don’t really know what tinkers did to deserve this reputation!
On the other hand, Southerners tend to mean blin as sorry.
Now, sorry in a general sense, as in regretful, is edifar. However, the most useful context in which you’d use sorry is if you want to actually ymddiheuro (apologise) to someone. Though there are further variations, this is usually mae’n ddrwg gen i in North Wales and mae’n flin ‘da fi in the South, or often just sori.
As an extension of this, Southerners may also use blin to say that they teimlo’n flin (feel sorry) for someone.
The fact that blin has these different meanings in the North and the South could theoretically cause miscommunication… take the phrase dw i’n flin am y camgymeriad. This could be either interpret as I’m angry about the mistake or I’m sorry about the mistake, a crucial difference!
