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🛡️ A Pict person 🗿 Of the Picts 📜 Picts' language
Pictish

Pictish

1 9.9
A language once spoken by an ancient people in northern Scotland
  • noun
  • Specialized
: pictio
  • In our history class, we learned that Pictish was once the language of the Picts.

Examples

  • Bran addressed me in Pictish, and I responded, surprised.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • I have never reached the level at which she and Myrddin perform, but I can speak Latin, Saxon, Gaelic, and Pictish, as well as read Latin.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • He spoke to me in Pictish, a few words only, but understandable.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • I speak Celtic and Pictish, and that's enough. "You will learn Latin and Saxon as well," Myrddin insisted.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • Bran addressed me in Pictish, a language I had never heard before.

  • He spoke a few words in Pictish, and it sounded fascinating to me.

Surface Forms

Pictish singular
Pictishes plural

Morphology

Pictish = Pict (transparent) = Pict + ish

The name of the language is formed by applying '-ish' to the ethnonym, a common and transparent pattern for language names.

Etymology

Pictish for the language takes its name from the people called Latin Picti, 'painted ones', so you can remember it by thinking of paint or picture. So, the Pictish language is the old, now extinct, speech of those people.