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WELSH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

gan.

used with bod to indicate possession

3 characters1 syllables approx.Cymraeg language

Meaning & usage

prep/ɡan/North-Wales, colloquial, standard/ɡɪn/North-Wales, colloquial/ɡan/South-Wales
  1. used with bod to indicate possession

    North-Wales
    Mae gen i wallt hir.
  2. by (after a passive construction)

    Cafodd y car ei ddwyn gan ddau llanc.
  3. by, from (authorship)

    Dw i wedi cael tecst gan dad yn dweud sori.
  4. used with verbal noun to indicate an action simultaneous with that of the main verb, while, whilst

    King, Gareth (1993), Modern Welsh: A Comprehensive Grammar (Routledge Grammars), London and New York: Routledge, →ISBN, page 131: Aeth o gwmpas y stafell gan ofyn yr un cwestiwn i bawb. He went around the room [while] asking everyone the same question.
Where this word comes from

From Middle Welsh gan, can, from Old Welsh cant, from Proto-Brythonic *gant, from Proto-Celtic *kanta. Cognate with Breton gant and Ancient Greek κατά (katá, “against; downwards”).

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gan studiogan workshello, gan

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.