The most common Welsh word for shelf is silff. This is a feminine noun with the plural silffoedd (though some people say silffiau instead).
silff
shelf
silffoedd
shelves
Although silff is a loan word from English, it doesn’t actually come directly from shelf. Interestingly, it was borrowed from an obsolete Cornish dialectical variant of it, shilf, which also referred to pieces of slate or straw.
Silffoedd (shelves) are dodrefn (furniture), often used to store llyfrau (books), offer coginio (kitchen equipment), or dillad (clothes). Sometimes they’re also decorated with blodau (flowers) and lluniau (pictures). But alternative storage options include:
- cwpwrdd = a cupboard
- cwpwrdd llyfrau = a bookcase
- wardrob / cwpwrdd dillad = a wardrobe
- cabinet / cwpwrdd arddangos = a cabinet
- cist = a chest / a trunk
- cist ddillad = a chest of drawers
- bocsys = boxes
The word silff has a broader application than its English equivalent, though. It’s used to refer to various kinds of shelves and ledges in contexts ranging from a silff ffenestr (windowsill) to a silff bobi (baking tray). The word for a mantelpiece varies a lot dialectically, but mantell tân, silff fantell, and silff-ben-tân are all common options.
Paid becso, welais i fwy o siwgr ar y silff.
Don’t worry, I saw more sugar on the shelf.
On the other hand, there are many contexts where its usage is identical to shelf, often in the case of actual calques taken directly from English. Oes silff (shelf life) is a good example of this. Or ar y silff (on the shelf) to refer to someone who’s socially considered ‘past their prime’!
There are a couple of words with overlapping meanings to silff. For example, astell is a very versatile word that can describe a plank or a ledge in multiple contexts. Sometimes it is interchangeable with silff, as in the phrase astell bobi which is equivalent to silff bobi.
Another one is ysgafell, which is a more old-fashioned and literary way of saying a ledge, as opposed to silff or the variant sil. You might hear it for shelf in the context a shelf of rock.
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, there is sielff. This is pronounced pretty much exactly like the English shelf (though a bit of a Welsh accent overlaid on the top won’t hurt), and is obviously borrowed from the word. It is pretty much just a variant of silff; it’s a feminine noun too, is used in all the same contexts, and even pluralises to silffoedd.
However, there is one good reason not to get these two words mixed up – their verbal forms. While silffo, the verb form of silff, means to shelve, sielffo, the verb form of sielff, is a very crude way of saying to have sex with!
