Now, I have to admit that the reason I’ve chosen today’s Welsh word of the day is very shallow – I just think it looks and sounds fun! The word in question is onglog, meaning angular.
onglog
angular
As you can hear from the pronunciation clip above, the central ng sound is gentle like in English words such as singing, rather than with an additional g sound as in mango. To get it right, simply say long log a few times fast and then cut the l off the beginning!
The suffix –og is quite a common way in Welsh to turn a noun into an adjective. You might recognise it from common words like enwog (famous), which is enw (name) + og, or cyfoethog (rich), which is cyfoeth (wealth) + og.
Here, you can probably guess that the noun being altered is ongl (an angle), which came to Welsh via English and French, all the way from the original Latin angulus. This one is a bit harder to pronounce for many learners because there are two consonants in a row that can’t be easily separated, so a lot of people end up saying ongol. This is fine – some Welsh people say it like this too!
If you’d like to master pronouncing it all as one syllable, though, a good tactic is to pretend to you are going to say onglog and then abruptly stop after the l.
Roedd ganddo fo drwyn hir, gên finiog, a chorff tenau, onglog.
He had a long nose, a sharp chin, and a thin, angular body.
Ongl is as you can imagine a very useful word, and has many descendants besides onglog, such as onglydd (protractor), triongl (triangle), and pedrongl (quadrilateral) to name but a few.
Onglog feels a bit less exclusively mathamategol (mathematical) than other words in this family, because it can be used to describe the look of something that is esgyrnog (bony) and / or miniog (sharp / pointy). For example, it’s common to describe someone as having a wyneb onglog (angular face).
All this doesn’t mean that onglog doesn’t appear in termau gwyddonol (scientific terms) too, though they are actually more in the realm of ffiseg (physics) than mathamateg (maths).
If you’re studying for your TAG Safon Uwch Ffiseg (Physics A-Level), you may need to get to grips with concepts like dadleoliad onglog (angular displacement) and momentwm onglog (angular momentum). The termau (terms) are as far as my knowledge goes though – please don’t ask me to explain them!
The word appears in the names of offer (tools) for DIY and construction as well – like a braced onglog (angle bracket) or plât onglog (angle plate).
Dw i angen braced onglog i gryfhau’r rhan hon o’r silff.
I need an angle bracket to strengthen this part of the shelf.
Lastly, I want to discuss the interesting variant conglog. This is actually a much older word than onglog. It comes from congl, a borrowing from medieval Latin influenced by the form of ongl which means an angle or a corner. You can think of it as a combination of ongl and cornel (a corner)!
Both congl and conglog are more likely to be used in North Wales than elsewhere in the country. They are also more likely to be used in descriptive ways than when talking about mathamateg or gwyddoniaeth. One very amusing and specific use of conglog I came across when researching for this article is cnau conglog. This literally means angular nuts / cornered nuts, and was apparently historically used to refer to two cnau (nuts) fused together.
So conglog is another word to add to your list alongside esgyrnog and miniog. Another good one is cornelog (cornered). Now you’re all set up to describe every manner of sharp and angular thing!
