The lexicography and etymology of OIr. eclas

This article examines the existing lexicographical evidence for the rare Irish word eclas, typically translated as ‘stomach’ or ‘gizzard’, and presents some hitherto unnoticed attestations of this term from a large collection of Irish medical remedies preserved in two sixteenth-century manuscripts. The new data allow better insights into the historical phonology and morphology of OIr. eclas and its Breton cognate elas, and make it possible to set up an Indo-European etymology for it and the related word glas in Welsh and Cornish. This reconstruction *(eg̑ʰs)-gʰl̥H- ST-o/eh₂-also has repercussions for the reconstruction of words for ‘digestive organs’ in other Indo-European languages. Even though eclas occurs as an equivalent for gaile ‘stomach’ in the context of late-medieval medical writing, it is argued that it probably originally referred to some other internal organ in the vicinity of the stomach, possibly the ‘oesophagus’.