Of all the flaws, one that I’d definitely love to remove from myself is diogi! This noun means laziness or sloth, and it also works as a verb meaning roughly to laze about.
diogi
laziness / to laze about
Both senses of diogi are derived from the adjective diog (lazy). The addition of the -i is quite a normal pattern for forming abstract nouns, like truan (poor) becoming trueni (pity), or verbs, like cyngor (advice) becoming cynghori (to advise). So since –i is so versatile as a suffix (it has plenty more functions, too!) it makes sense that diogi has these two related meanings.
Diog itself is from the proto-Celtic *diawkus, also meaning lazy. The *di– that it begins with is an element meaning without, whereas *-awkus probably meant speedy.
Diogi is subject to both the soft and the nasal mutation:
Soft mutation
ddiogi
Nasal mutation
niogi
Aspirate mutation
N/A
As a noun, it’s abstract so it doesn’t have a plural form. However it does technically have a gender; it’s considered masculine.
You could use it in multiple ways. For one, in a more general sense, it is the word for sloth – as in one of y saith pechod marwol (the seven deadly sins).
- llid = wrath
- cenfigen = envy
- balchder = pride
- chwant = lust
- trachwant = greed
- glythineb = gluttony
- diogi = sloth
More pleasant is the actual anifail (animal) called a sloth. The Welsh agree on the diogi of sloths, so we call them diogynnod, or diogyn for just one. It’s not a misnomer – they are incredibly araf (slow) and on the ground, can’t move more than three meters in a munud (minute). They generally spend less than 10% of their lives yn symud (moving).
I was also quite pleased to discover today that if you type https://www.diogi.co.uk/ into your address bar it actually comes up with a picture of a diogyn!
Nid diogi ymdrechu a methu.
It’s not laziness to try and fail.
On the other hand and on a more day-to-day basis, you can use the word diogi to criticise a specific nodwedd (trait) of a person you know. For example, I’m afraid I often accuse my little brawd (brother) of diogi when he very understandably wants to play gemau fideo (video games) instead of adolygu (revising) for his arholiadau (exams).
Or I could reprimand him with the Welsh proverb hedyn pob drwg yw diogi (laziness is the seed of every bad thing).
In these kinds of contexts, diogi could be replaced by pydrwch or pydri, meaning the same thing, in parts of the South. There’s also the wonderfully passive-aggressive diffrwythdra (laziness / unproductiveness, literally unfruitfulness)!
Ro’n i’n diogi’r bore i gyd yn y tŷ.
I was lazing about all morning in the house.
As a verb, its conjugation pattern is identical to most Welsh verbs, but you are likely to hear and see it in an unconjugated form. Its meaning doesn’t correspond exactly to any English verb – you could translate it as to be lazy, to laze, or even to loiter.
So in the same example with fy mrawd (my brother) I could say to him Peidiwch â diogi! (Stop lazing about / Stop being lazy!) This is probably not a kind way to speak to someone you love, but at least it’s grammatically correct! 😉
In this sense, it has plenty of synonyms across different parts of the country.
- lolan / lolio (to loll about)
- smera / gwag-smera (a bit like to dawdle)
- segura (to idle)
- llorchan (to lounge, to laze)
- clertio / clertian (to clart)
- magu diogi (literally to raise laziness)
Which ones have you heard used near you?
