Welsh Word of the Day: Prancio (to prance)

My parents’ house is surrounded by porfeydd (grazing fields). I’m quite fond of stopping to converse with the defaid (sheep) that occupy them any time of year – but it’s hard not to be biased towards gwanwyn (springtime), when the ŵyn (lambs) are at their liveliest.

There’s this specific little naid (jump) I’ve noticed ŵyn and geifr bach (goat kids) doing where they spring into the air and knock their back and front carnau (hooves) together. It’s ridiculously adorable, and I don’t think there’s a better word in any language to describe it than the Welsh prancio (prancing / frolicking / gambolling).

The excellent online Welsh dictionary Gweiadur (a compound of gwe, web, and geiriadur, dictionary) gives a definition that I think is particularly apt – neidio a dawnsio mewn ffordd fywiog a hapus. This literally translates to jumping and dancing in a lively and happy way.

You might have assumed that prancio is borrowed from the English to prance, given they look the same and have the same meaning, but it actually comes from the word prank. This makes more sense when you remember that the letter c is always pronounced with a hard sound, like in cat, in Welsh.

But if we look further back, it becomes evident that prank and prance are cognates anyway – it’s all just a big semantic soup of silliness and mischief! 😊

Since it begins with a p, prancio can technically be affected by all three kinds of Welsh mutation. It’s very unlikely that it would ever have to take a nasal mutation, though, given the limited situations in which it arises.

I’ve been talking about ŵyn here, but prancio is often used to describe the action of a ceffyl (horse) or merlyn (pony).

In fact, the earliest written example of this word that Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru (the Welsh University Dictionary) is about horses. It’s an entry in a 1547 dictionary, reading prankio march = praunce a horse.

In this context, prancio is actually being used to mean to cause to prance / to cause to skip, rather than describing the action the horse itself is taking – clearly analogous to a similar use in English that was common at the time.

Likely, this means agitating or dychryn (frightening) the horse in some way so that it will walk in a sionc (springy), artiffisial (artificial) way. It’s not really the same as the spontaneous neidio (jumping) and chwarae (playing) that baby farm animals do for fun, even though the action may physically look similar.

You may also notice that this dictionary has march rather than ceffyl for horse. March is an older, less common word, meaning horse or stallion. It shows up a lot in older Welsh texts.

Prancio certainly isn’t the only word in the Welsh arsenal to describe this movement though I think it’s definitely the best. For a start, you can just say gwneud pranc (literally making frolics).

Another one I really like, though, is campio (also rendered campro or camprio) – which can be used as a synonym of prancio, but can also mean to compete at a game. In the South, moelystota is frequently used for humans as well as animals, and means something like to jump for joy. You could also use sgipio (to skip) or sboncio (to bounce about).

Since jumping is a fundamental part of this activity, a lot of descriptors are also compound words or phrases based on the word neidio (to jump) itself. Take crychneidio, llamneidio or neidio a champio for example.

Another common element showing up in these words is llam, which is a noun meaning a leap. You’ve just seen it in llamneidio, but there’s also dychlamu, crychlamu and llamsachu.

All of these have been recorded in different parts of Wales – the variety is amazing! You can definitely tell we’re a country full of ŵyn.