The word glas, meaning blue, turns up in a surprising number of Welsh phrases and expressions. This might not be expected, since Wales is usually associated with the colours green (gwyrdd) and red (coch). And we can’t exactly associate blue with Welsh skies, since they’re often more likely to be rainy (glawiog) and grey (llwyd)!
One potential clue to the prominence of glas in Welsh vocabulary is that it hasn’t always just meant blue in Welsh, but a much wider range of colours, and even other, less literal meanings. Let’s take a look at the huge variety of uses of the word glas.
glas
blue
Glas evolved from the proto-Celtic root *glastos, meaning clean or clear. (This is probably also the root of the modern Welsh word glân, meaning clean.) The word appears in every single one of the surviving Celtic languages, although in Manx it is spelt slightly differently, as glass. Its meaning also varies a bit between the languages – in Cornish, it can refer to blue, green, or grey, whereas in Manx, for example, it is more likely to be translated as pale or raw.
Dark blue is glas tywyll or dulas (literally: black-blue), whereas light blue is glas golau or goleulas. Here’s how you might describe some other shades of blue:
- glas o eind = indigo
- glaswyrdd = turquoise
- glas morol = sea-blue
- glas brenhinol = royal blue
- glas y dinas = Venice blue
- glas y benlas = cornflower blue
- glas y llynges = navy blue
As for all adjectives in Welsh, there is a special form of glas to mean “equally blue as”, which is glased. Bluer is glasach, and bluest is glasaf. And of course, all of these terms mutate!
Soft mutation
las
Nasal mutation
nglas
Aspirate mutation
N/A
Being an adjective, glas undergoes a soft mutation when describing feminine nouns. So, you would wear a crys glas (blue shirt) but a blows las (blue blouse). There is also a plural form of glas for describing plural nouns, which is gleision. However, it doesn’t really matter if you just use the normal form, unless you’re writing something very formal.
Now let’s get to the most interesting thing about glas – the fact that it once covered a wider range of colours (lliwiau) than just blue, as it is interpreted in the modern Welsh to English translation.
In Old and Middle Welsh, glas could be used to refer to shades of green if you were talking about leaves (dail), grass (glaswellt), fields (caeau), pastures (porfeydd), vegetables (llysiau), immature fruit (ffrwythau), or foliage (deiliant). It could also mean silver (arian) or grey, especially when referring to coins (darnau arian), stones (cerrig) or metal (metel).
These days, the use of glas for anything other than blue is far more restricted, due to the heavy influence of English. However, it still turns up in some place names, like Ynyslas (Green Island) or Maesglas (Green Field). You can also trace the old meaning in compound words and expressions, such as glaswellt (grass), glasu (to go green), or yn las gan genfigen (green with envy). The use of glas to mean silver or grey is even harder to find evidence of, but swllt glas means silver shilling.
Dwi’n mynd i brynu sgert las.
I’m going to buy a blue skirt.
Another archaic meaning of glas that pops up in various phrases is new. This probably derives from glas, referring to the fresh green of new grass or foliage. Usually, the Welsh word for new is newydd, but glas might be used in particularly poetic writing. Glasdydd is a lovely word referring to the break of day, or you can say glas y wawr for break of dawn.
A more everyday word deriving from this use of glas is glasfyfyriwr, which has a similar meaning to the American English word freshman. It’s a compound word, made up of glas and myfyriwr (student).
Glas can also mean wan or pallid, so the verb glasu, which we talked about earlier as meaning to go green (usually in the case of a wood or field), can also mean to go pale, when used to refer to a person. Another example of this usage is glas wên, meaning a faint or sickly smile. Even less pleasant is gwenwyn glas – a deadly poison.
Wyt ti’n meddwl y cawn ni aeaf glas?
Do you think there’ll be no snow this winter?
Whatever it’s describing, glas is really common in terms relating to nature, being used to describe various plants, animals, and birds. Here are some examples.
- glas y dorlan = kingfisher
- cudyll glas = sparrowhawk
- barcud glas = hen-harrier (and barcud coch is red kite)
- glas y llwyn = hyacinth or bluebell
- clochlas = bluebell
- glas y gors = forget-me-not
- carreg las = slate
- gaeaf glas = a winter without snow
- glas dwl = blue tit (literally silly blue)
But even after reading about all of these different meanings, I still haven’t found an explanation for one of the most common uses of glas in Welsh. That’s the idiom trio (eich) gorau glas, which means to try one’s very best. Who knows where that expression came from – perhaps the Welsh just got used to using glas to describe pretty much everything!
