cwm

cwm

See also: Cwm and CWM

English

WOTD – 23 July 2010

A cwm on the south side of Rhinog Fawr, in Wales.

Etymology

Borrowed from Welsh cwm (“valley”). Doublet of combe.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /kuːm/, /kʊm/[1][2][3][4]

  • Audio (UK)

    (file)

• Homophones: combe, coom
• Rhymes: -uːm

Noun

cwm (plural cwms)

1. A valley head created through glacial erosion and with a shape similar to an amphitheatre.

   Synonyms: cirque, combe, corrie

Translations

valley head created through glacial erosion

Chinese: Mandarin: 山側凹地／山侧凹地 (shāncè āodì) Dutch: keteldal (nl) n, kaar (nl) n, U-dal n Esperanto: cirkvalo Finnish: onsilo (fi) French: cirque (fr) German: Kar (de) n Norwegian: Bokmål: botn (no) m Nynorsk: botn m Polish: cyrk lodowcowy (pl) m, kar (pl) m, kocioł (pl) m Russian: (ледниковый (ru) (lednikovyj)) цирк (ru) m (cirk) Serbo-Croatian: krnica (sh) f Spanish: circo (es)

References

1. The Chambers Dictionary, 9th Ed., 2003
2. “cwm”, in Collins English Dictionary.
3. “cwm”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.. Accessed 7 September 2013.
4. “cwm”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

Further reading

• cirque on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

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Welsh

Etymology

From Proto-Celtic *kumbā (compare Breton komm (“trough”), Irish com, coim (“chest cavity”), French combe), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱumbʰ- (compare Latin incumbere (“to lie down”), English coomb and Old English cumb (“hollow; narrow valley”), Dutch kom (“bowl, basin”), German Kumpf (“vessel”), Ancient Greek κύμβη (kúmbē, “hollow”),Sanskrit कुम्भ (kumbha, “a pot, jug”)).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kʊm/
• Rhymes: -ʊm

Noun

cwm m (plural cymau or cymoedd)

1. valley, dale, glen

Descendants

• → English: cwm

Mutation

Welsh mutation
radical	soft	nasal	aspirate
cwm	gwm	nghwm	chwm
Note: Some of these forms may be hypothetical. Not every possible mutated form of every word actually occurs.