Uncertain Irish: Neamhchinnte

Hey there, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Rowan. I’m calling from Ottawa, Ontario.

Hey, Rowan, we’re glad to have you. What’s on your mind?

Yeah, so there’s a word that my family uses, nowziki, that I was wondering if you could help me track down the origin of.

What’s the word?

It’s nowziki, so I’d spell that N-O-W-T-H-C-I if I were to give it a try.

Nowziki?

Yeah.

And in what context would they use it?

Yeah. So we might say if we’re feeling a little bit restlessly unhappy, uninspired, you know, moving from one thing to another and not able to sit down and actually get going on something.

And my mom uses it and her mother is Irish. So I was wondering if that may be the origin of it.

Irish or Irish heritage?

Irish, yeah.

Yeah, my maternal grandmother’s Irish from Barrett.

Gotcha.

So you learned it from your mother who learned it from her mother.

Yeah, exactly.

And so it’s when you’re not quite sure what to do. Is that what I’m hearing?

Yeah, you’re feeling, you know, like just sort of restless.

Restless, gotcha.

Yeah, nothing’s really working for you today.

I clarified the Irish point because I think that’s our source here, and I think you knew that already.

But I think I found the word. I think I know the actual word, the Irish word for it.

It’s fantastic. I’m really excited.

Let me tell you how it’s spelled, and then I’ll give you an approximation of the pronunciation.

It’s N-E-A-M-H-C-H-I-N-N-T-E. And the Irish Gaelic pronunciation is something like Naukinta.

Nau or Naukinta or Naukinta.

So that middle sound is either an aspirated H or an H, or a TH or an SH, something like that, depending on the dialect of the speaker.

And what it means is uncertain or indeterminate.

And the plural form of it is even closer to the word you said.

The plural form is naufinti, something like that.

Okay.

Yeah, it definitely sounds like it.

Yeah, naufinti.

And so you might say that somebody is unsure or not fixed or indeterminate or something is indeterminate.

And it combines these two Irish words.

The first part, the N-E-A-M-H, is a prefix that means non or un, just like we have in English.

And the C-I-N-N-T-E comes from a word meaning certain or sure.

So it’s just, you know, a prefix and a root word there combined in kind of the same way that we would do it in English.

Okay. Okay. Well, really good to know.

I tried looking it up before, and of course, I didn’t. I don’t know much about Irish orthography, so I figured that maybe I was spelling it very wrong.

Well, there you go.

Just to summarize, Rowan, it’s the plural adjective, nauchenti, and it means uncertain or unsure.

Okay, well, thank you so much. I’m really happy to have that mystery solved.

Our pleasure. We’re happy to have you.

Let me give you that spelling one more time. N-E-A-M-H-C-H-I-N-N-T-E.

Now you can look that up, okay? And you’ll find it in Irish dictionaries for sure.

Okay, thank you so much.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

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