ny weleiste eto nemawr o boeneu uffernn Ỻ.A. 154 ‘so far thou hast seen but little of the pains of hell’.
Adjectival, with neg., nemor ddim ‘hardly anything’, nemor un ‘hardly any one’.
yn emawr s.g. 27, yn ymor c.m. 55, with prosthetic ỿ § 21 iii.
(5) nĕ́pell (for *neb pell), with a neg. ‘not far’.
er nad yw efe yn ddiau neppell oddiwrth bob un o honom Act. xvii 27; yn epell s.g. 219.
v. (1) dim is probably never an adj.; a noun following it is a dependent genitive, as—
heb ẟim llywenyẟ Ỻ.A. 147 ‘without anything of joy’ i.e. without any joy; heb allel gwneuthur dim lles s.g. 37 ‘without being able to do any good’; na wna ynddo ddim gwaith Ex. xx 10; cf. Ps. xxxiv 10.
(2) But before a definite noun or pron. o ‘of’ is used after dim:
ny wyẟant ẟim ohonunt Ỻ.A. 8 ‘they know nothing of them’; ac nyt oeẟ dim ohonaw yno r.m. 18 ‘and there was nothing of him there’ i.e. he was not there; ny warandawei ẟim o’r attep w.m. 53 ‘he would not listen to anything of the reply’ i.e. to the reply.
ẟim o was of very frequent occurrence, and was reduced to mo in the spoken lang. (chiefly N.W.) as early as the 14th cent, if D.G. 496 is authentic. Cf. E.P. 271, Diar. xxii 22, 28, Job xxxvii 23, b.cw. 18 l. 1.
- Odid i Dduw, doed a ddêl,
- Fyth ddewis mo vath Howel.—W.Ỻ. 45.
‘Scarcely will God, come what may, ever choose such a one as Howel.’
(3) Used in an adverbial case ẟim signifies ‘at all’, etc. Nac ef ẟim. Ỻ.A. 48 ‘not at all’; cf. 1 Cor. xv 29, 1 Thes. v 3.
This adverbial ddim is nearly as frequent in the spoken lang. as pas after a neg. in French.
vi. (1) W. neb, Ir. nech ‘any one’ (gen. neich) < Kelt. *nequ̯os: Lith. nekàs ‘something’, nekùrs ‘quidam’. It is believed that the *ne- is the neg. particle, so that the meaning was originally neg., and became positive by the use of another neg. in the sentence (cf. Fr. nul). But it is possible that this *ne- is positive, and is a form of the n-demonstrative: Lat. ego-ne, see Walde² 255 (where Lith. ne-kùrs is so explained, though differently in 510).
(2) W. dim: Ir. dim ‘something’, as in ni di nacca dim, acht is du dim ‘it is not from no thing, but is from something’.—The W. dim is written with i in Ml. mss. which distinguish i and ɥ; and dim in “proest” with grym m.a. i 374 shows that its vowel was not ɥ in the
