Teach is an

Irish language Irish ( Standard Irish: ), also known as Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family, which is a part of the Indo-European language family. Irish is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was ...

term. The following

definition A definition is a statement of the meaning of a term (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Definitions can be classified into two large categories: intensional definitions (which try to give the sense of a term), and extensional definitio ...

of the term has been given by

Dónall Mac Giolla Easpaig Dónall Mac Giolla Easpaig, M.A., is the former Chief Placenames Officer in the Placenames Branch in the Department of Community, Equality and Gaeltacht Affairs (''An Roinn Gnóthaí Pobail, Comhionannais agus Gaeltachta'') in Ireland. He is a le ...

''The word ''teach'', 'a house', is the only widely attested native Irish element to designate a church of monastic site in early placenames. the term is found in placenames of all periods but, generally speaking, the meaning '(monastic) church'. The late Deirdre Flanagan has suggested that the deployment of ''teach'' as an ecclesiastical placename element is a continuation of the pagan use of the term to
denote In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For in ...
sacred or mythological sites. There is sufficient evidence available to show that
ome Ome may refer to: Places * Ome (Bora Bora), a public island in the lagoon of Bora Bora * Ome, Lombardy, Italy, a town and ''comune'' in the Province of Brescia * Ōme, Tokyo, a city in the Prefecture of Tokyo * Ome (crater), a crater on Mars Tran ...
of the eccleiastical sitename
f Ireland F, or f, is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ef'' (pronounced ), and the plural is ''efs''. Hist ...
containing the element ''teach'' is of pre-Christian origin.''

He further notes that along with the words Cíll and Díseart it can be loosely translated as church. Teach is purely

Gaelic Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Gaelic languages are spoken in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ca ...

, while the other two are derived from

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

. It is now used in Ireland to denote a secular dwelling, often a family house. An alternative form is ''tígh''.

References

* ''The Christian impact on early Ireland;placename evidence'', Deirdre Flannagan in ''Irland und Europa'', ed. P Ni Cathain and Michael Richter,

Stuttgart Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...

, 1984, pp. 25–51. * ''Early Ecclesiastical Settlement Names of County Galway'',

, in "Galway:History and Society - Interdisciplinary Essays on the History of an Irish County", pp. 805–807, Dublin, 1996. . Irish words and phrases Cultural anthropology {{Cultural-anthropology-stub

See also

References