An‑te

About this compound word

Te is an adjective meaning hot. (Not to be confused with the homophone teith, meaning flee.

An‑, with a trailing non-breaking hyphen in the written form, is an intensive prefix meaning very.

Thus, an‑te (very hot).

Notes

An‑ lenites b, c, f, g, m and p.

The hyphen is important, being what distinguishes an‑, the intensive prefix, from an, the definite article.

In Munster, this intensive prefix includes a terminal epenthetic vowel before consonants (also occasionally before vowels), and is pronounced ana‑. It also lenites d, s and t: ana‑dheas (very nice), ana‑shéimh (very gentle), ana‑the (very hot) ⁊rl…