Though having a gyrfa (career) that you love is a dream and a blessing, for many people unfortunately it’s not reality. If your swydd (job) isn’t your passion, you may rely on dreams of a more exciting ymddeoliad (retirement) to get you through the day!
Ymddeol is the Welsh word for retiring or to retire. Very colloquially, you may hear riteirio, which is obviously an adoption of the English.
ymddeol
to retire
If you’ve been studying Welsh for a while you may notice that the first part of this word is the reflexive prefix ym-, often used on verbs where someone is doing something to themselves, or to another person. The second part is a soft mutation of deol, which actually means to banish! It can also appear in the forms diol, deoli, and deholi.
So by ymddeol, you are banishing yourself from your swydd. Sounds a bit dramatic, right? You may also notice that there’s no mention of oed (age) or pensiwn (pension) here, even though we expect retiring to be about finishing gwaith for good at a certain stage in your bywyd (life), rather than just leaving one swydd in order to start another.
Indeed, ymddeol in Welsh as opposed to its English equivalent can technically also mean to resign. However, this usage is not that common now and is becoming even less so. Ymddiswyddo is the more common choice for to resign in the context of gwaith (work) – this is a construction built up from ym, a soft mutation of the negative prefix di, the noun swydd, and the verbal ending o.
In English we use retire in a broad variety of senses, like saying you’re retiring to your house in the country or retiring for the evening, although to many people they sound excessively formal and archaic now.
We don’t use ymddeol like this in spoken Welsh these days at all. It is listed as a possible use of the word in the historical dictionary Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru, suggesting it was more common some centuries ago – this would make sense given the original banishing meaning which doesn’t refer specifically to gwaith.
But words evolve over time and it would sound strange to use ymddeol like this today, even more formal and old-fashioned than it might in English.
So generally for such uses simply mynd (to go) or gadael (to leave) will be appropriate. There is also cilio / ymgilio which means to retreat or to withdraw. Someone who is retiring is just swil (shy), and in retirement as in in seclusion, as opposed to in the period of life after work, would be o’r neilltu.
Maen nhw’n bwriadu teithio’r byd ar ôl iddyn nhw ymddeol.
They are planning to travel the world after they retire.
There are a few useful technical terms which incorporate this word:
- dyddiad ymddeol (retirement date)
- pensiwn ymddeol y wladwriaeth (state retirement pension)
- tai ymddeol (retirement housing)
- oedran ymddeol gorfodol (mandatory retirement age)
- oedran ymddeol statudol (statutory retirement age)
In fact the oedran ymddeol is a bit of a sore spot for many Brits at the moment – for a long time the provision of the pensiwn y wladwriaeth put people’s minds at ease, with the knowledge that no matter what one was able to ennill (earn, also win) during their gyrfa (career), they would be taken care of with at least some arian (money) in their henoed (old age).
However, with increasing pwysau ariannol (financial pressures) on the llywodraeth (government), the oedran ymddeol will continue to rise – it is currently chwech ar drigain / chwe deg chwech (sixty six) – and some fear it will cease to be linked to chwyddiant (inflation) which guarantees its purchasing power remains the same.
You will see differences in different texts as to whether oed or oedran is used in the phrase retirement age. This reflects much broader differences (and disagreements!) about the appropriate usage of oed and oedran generally.
I’ve used oedran in the list above because it is the term used by Llywodraeth Cymru (the Welsh Government) – and the llwyodraeth are the ones who’ll be deciding what the oedran ymddeol actually is, at the end of the day!
