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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

qualtagh.

The first person one encounters, either after leaving one's home or (sometimes) outside one's home, especially on New Year's Day; a first-foot.

8 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkwɑːltəx/Received-Pronunciation/ˈkwɑːltək/Received-Pronunciation/ˈkwɑltək/General-American/ˈkweɪ(ə)ltəx/
  1. The first person one encounters, either after leaving one's home or (sometimes) outside one's home, especially on New Year's Day; a first-foot.

Where this word comes from

PIE word *ḱóm Borrowed from Manx qualtagh, quaaltagh (“first person one meets after leaving the house; first person one meets on New Year’s Day”, literally “one who meets or is met”), from quaail (“act of meeting; a meeting”) (ultimately from Old Irish comdál, from com- (prefix meaning ‘with’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm (“beside, by; near; with”)) + dál (“part, share; land in which a tribe lives”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *deh₂- (“to divide; to share”))) + -agh (suffix forming adjectives and nouns expressing belonging, a connection to, having, or an involvement with). The interfix -t- may be modelled after an unattested form of Old Irish comaltae (“foster-brother; companion”).

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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.