Qualtagh
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The first person one encounters, either after leaving one's home or (sometimes) outside one's home, especially on New Year's Day; a first-foot.
"A company of young lads or men, generally went in old times on what they termed the Qualtagh, at Christmas or New Year's Day to the house of their more wealthy neighbours; some one of the company repeating in an audible voice the following rhyme:– […] they were then invited in to partake of the best that the house could afford."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"A company of young lads or men, generally went in old times on what they termed the Qualtagh, at Christmas or New Year's Day to the house of their more wealthy neighbours; some one of the company repeating in an audible voice the following rhyme:– […] they were then invited in to partake of the best that the house could afford."
Etymology
PIE word *ḱóm Borrowed from Manx qualtagh, quaaltagh (“first person one meets after leaving the house; first person one meets on New Year’s Day”, literally “one who meets or is met”), from quaail (“act of meeting; a meeting”) (ultimately from Old Irish comdál, from com- (prefix meaning ‘with’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm (“beside, by; near; with”)) + dál (“part, share; land in which a tribe lives”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *deh₂- (“to divide; to share”))) + -agh (suffix forming adjectives and nouns expressing belonging, a connection to, having, or an involvement with). The interfix -t- may be modelled after an unattested form of Old Irish comaltae (“foster-brother; companion”).
Related phrases
More for "qualtagh"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.