duine

gen sing duine, pl. daoine, sm Man. 2 Person, body, individual. 3 The oldest man of a village. Duine gun mhath gun chron, is motha a chron na a mhath, a man that's neither good nor ill is more ill than good —duine gun mhath gun chron, is also applied to a shiftless, thriftless sort of man who is otherwise quite decent; an duine, the good-man of the house; an duine agam-sa, my husband — duine is often applied to either men or women, as, a bheil duine a-staigh? is anyone in? is fheàrr duine na daoine, a proper person is better than many men; ro-dhuine, an excellent man, man of rank; fiadh-dhuine, wild man, satyr; duine gaoil, a male relative; duine math, good man; duine nan clag, the bellman. Fear de mo dhaoine, one of my men, is a good example of the difference between fear and duine. [The following remarks apply to W. of Ross-shire. Duine means emphatically a married man. An unmarried man of any age is gille. Fear is as colourless, except as to sex, as “individual,” “person,” or “one” and is generally little more than a peg on which to hang an attribute. Cha robh e 'na dhuine aig an àm sin, he was not a (married) man at that time. A native would never commit himself so far as to ask “có e an duine sin? who is that man?” Bean is duine, is husband and wife (lit. wife and husband). The precedence of the wife is possibly a relic of Pictish custom. The phrase occurs in other parts, for example Perthshire, which was also in Pictland. In Arran [& Argyllshire — AH] “fear agus bean” is the invariable usage. In Gairloch both phrases are used. In Lewis the latter and more rarely “duine agus bean” are used. “Cà bheil na fir ud?” where are those fellows? used, for example, in reference to two boys, aged respectively two and three — CR in Gael. Soc. xxiv, 368].

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