I’ve always loved the Welsh word clustog, meaning cushion or pillow, because I find it so unique, with the first part of the word clust meaning ear.
You’d think that naming pillows after ears wouldn’t be that common, but in actuality I was wrong – clustog’s not unique because French has the very same construction with oreiller. It makes sense more for the pillow than the cushion meaning, since when you lie down to cysgu (sleep) in your gwely (bed) at night, your clustog is the place you put your clust.
The plural is clustogau (cushions / pillows). It is a feminine noun – in general usage, although there is some variation in what dictionaries will recommend – which means that adjectives used to describe it will soft mutate, as in clustog fanblu (feather pillow) from manblu (down).
clustog
pillow / cushion
clustogau
pillows / cushions
So clustog comes from clust, but where does clust come from? Its root is the proto-Celtic *klousta, which also produced words in other Celtic languages like cleaysh (ear) in modern Irish Gaelic. Ultimately, it comes from the proto-Indo-European *klew. We have *klew to thank not only for clust but also clywed (to hear) in Welsh and loud in English.
You will need to worry about all three mutations for this word:
Soft mutation
glustog
Nasal mutation
nghlustog
Aspirate mutation
chlustog
The soft mutation will appear often – one example would be in the phrase prynais (i) glustog (I bought a cushion). Once you’ve successfully bought it you can now describe it as fy nghlustog (my cushion) and put it on your gwely amidst your other gobenyddion a chlustogau (pillows and cushions).
Hang on a second, what’s this new word I’ve just introduced? Well, gobennydd means pillow too!
Defnyddiais i fy mraich fel clustog.
I used my arm as a pillow.
The thing is that, as with many aspects of Welsh, the use of clustog differs in the North and the South. In most parts of the South, clustog is the default word for both a pillow and a cushion, and gobennydd is less used, or used in the sense of a bolster for clustogau (not a bolster seat in a car though – just to make things more confusing that’s clustog hybu).
In the North, gobennydd is generally heard quite a lot and it means a pillow, with clustog specifically referring only to a cushion.
In some older texts, you can see the differentiation made clear by the use of the term clustog ben (literally head pillow). I haven’t heard or seen this used in modern Welsh.
The words for pillowcase also vary between the North and the South. As you might expect, Northerners are more likely to say cas gobennydd or gorchudd gobennydd whereas cas clustog is heard in the South.
Gobennydd’s etymology is kind of similar to that of clustog – the word includes a soft mutated form of pen (head), perhaps a reference to laying one’s pen down to cysgu, like with clust in clustog. The prefix go- in Welsh often means next to or under, so a gobennydd is what goes under the pen.
Am glustog feddal – mae’n gyfforddus iawn.
What a soft cushion – it’s very comfortable.
But clustog is our word of the day today so let’s get back to it. It has one more meaning, which is a pad or compress; often here we’d see it in the diminutive form clustogan or clustogen. The most common option though is just to borrow the English pad. For a compress for a wound, clustog gweli is recorded historically but you would mostly hear and see clwt today.
This sense of clustog is also related to the verbal form, clustogi, which means to pad or to cushion something – it’s quite like the use of the verb in English, but can also be used for to bolster.
Then to cushion as in to alleviate, to soothe or to soften in a metaphorical sense would be lleddfu, coming from the interesting adjective lleddf (melancholy, or in music minor).
Which word do you prefer for pillow – clustog or gobennydd?
