IN the preface to Tomas de Bhaldraithe's English Irish Dictionary, the distinguished lexicographer noted there were 18 existing terms for "telescope" in Irish.
These included such exotic coinages as cianradharcan ("far seer"), gloine fheachaint ("seeing glass") and suil fhiodan ("eye tube"), together with the more prosaic teileascop.
It was a striking example of the problems he faced in compiling his dictionary. Published in 1959, it was the first comprehensive effort of its kind in an independent Irish State. It has not yet been replaced with a more up to date edition.
With the fall of Gaelic civilisation in the 17th century, the written standard for Irish had also fallen by the wayside, and Prof de Bhaldraithe was faced with a bewildering choice of terms and spellings.
This choice was increased by the enthusiasm with which some Gaelic revivalists in the first half of the century sought to establish "pure" (i.e., untainted by anglicised influences) forms for modern inventions such as the telescope.
It is thanks to his far seeing and pragmatic approach that school children today are not burdened with concoctions such as forionar in place of the humble geansai, or students of accountancy do not have to wrestle with such terms as gnathcheannaitheoir ("usual buyer") in place of custaimeir, and seilbhcribhinn ("possession writing") for leas (lease).
Thanks to him, also, words such as teileascop and teilifis have become assimilated into the language in their present spellings.
Together with An Caighdean Oifigiuil - the official standard, first, published in 1958 his dictionary helped re establish a literary standard for the language, after a gap of some 300 years.
Inevitably, viewed from a distance of almost 40 years, it now seems dated and in need of revision. Nor did it escape from the moral climate of the 1950s: one of its most famous entries is fein truailliu ("self pollution"), which he gives as a translation for "masturbation".
Nevertheless, it stands as an eloquent testimony to the work of a man who throughout his life was fascinated by words, and their seed, breed and generation. It is no surprise, given this fascination, that one of his sons is known colloquially in Connemara as "Mac a Dictionary".
He collapsed and died on Wednesday at the launch of The Words We Use, a collection of Diarmuid O Muirithe's contributions to The Irish Times.
Born in Limerick in 1916, Tomas de Bhaldraithe was educated in Belvedere College where he learned to play cricket and played for an Irish Times eleven in Lansdowne Road. His attempt to organise a hurling team at the college was resisted.
In 1934 he won a scholarship to UCD, where he, studied Irish, French and English and became active in An Cumann Gaelach and the History Society. Following first class honours in French and Irish in, 1937, he was awarded a travelling scholarship to the University of Paris.
After the outbreak of hostilities he returned to Ireland, where he was allowed to continue his scholarship studying the Irish dialect of Cois Fharraige in Co Galway.
He later looked back on those ears in the Galway Gaeltacht as a significant period in his life. He associated with and studied the speech of many youths his own age in the area, many of whom were unable to find work. Lamp oil was rationed and there was a shortage of turf.
From this period emerged his major study of the Irish of Cois Fharraige, Gaeilge Chois Fhairrge: An Deilbhiocht. It was the first full comparative study of an Irish dialect and was partly motivated by the desire to challenge the view of some Munster scholars that the Galway dialect was a miserable patois.
He was awarded a Ph.D. in 1942 and a post as assistant lecturer in UCD's Irish department. During the same year, he helped launch Comhar magazine and became editor for a time. He also married a fellow student, Vivienne Turley. They had nine children.
In 1945 the Department of Education asked him to prepare a supplement to McKenna's English Irish dictionary. He refused, proposing instead a new one.
The department in turn said no, but he appealed to the then Taoiseach Eamon de Valera who supported his position.
The dictionary was published in 1959 and the following year he was appointed professor of modern Irish language and literature in UCD.
His interest in modern, literature was shown by his editions of Padraic O Conaire's works, and by his anthology of short stories, Nuascealaiocht, published in 1952.
While at UCD he set up a language laboratory, the first of its kind in Britain or Ireland, and collected an extensive archive of material on the different dialects of Irish.
Published work included Seanchas Thomais Laighleis (1977), a collection of folklore from the mouth of a noted seanchai, and Cin Lae Amhlaoibh (1970), a collection of entries in the diaries of Amhlaoibh O Suilleabhain.
He was consulting editor, of Niall O Donaill's Focloir Gaeilge Bearla, published in 1977. The previous year he was appointed general editor of Focloir Stairiuil na Nua Ghaeilge, a major project by the Royal Irish, Academy, to produce a definitive historical dictionary of the language similar to the Oxford English Dictionary.
This mammoth task - the culmination of his life's work - is as yet unfinished.
In 1978 he was appointed professor of Irish dialectology in UCD, the first professorship of its kind in an Irish university. He held the post until his retirement in, 1986, when colleagues and friends resented him with Feilscribhinn Thomais de Bhaldraithe, a collection of scholarly essays, as a token of their esteem, survived by his wife Vivienne and his sister Caitlin Garrett, and by three daughters and six sons. His funeral takes place tomorrow morning after 10 o clock Mass at the Church of the Holy Name, Ranelagh, to Deansgrange Cemetery.