Learned borrowing fromOld Englishwealh. CompareWales,Welsh.

• IPA^(key):/ˈwæl(x)/

wealh (pluralwealhs)

1. (historical) InAnglo-SaxonEngland, a speaker of aBrythoniclanguage, especiallyWelsh.
   • 1885,John Beddoe,The Races of Britain: A Contribution to the Anthropology of Western Europe, Bristol:J. W. Arrowsmith, […]; London: Trübner and Co., […],pages61–62:

     It is possible that the services on the royal manors, of which Seebohm gives one instance even in the very Saxon Hampshire, may have been heavier than the average of manors held by eorls or thanes. If so, the tenantry on the former may have been in larger proportionwealhs.

   • 1889 October,A[ndrew] G[eorge] Little, “Gesiths and Thegns”, inMandell Creighton, editor,The English Historical Review, volume IV, number16, London:Longmans, Green, and Co. and New York: […],page728:

     That the kings hadwealhs in their service, whose position rose in consequence of that service, is shown by Ine, cap. 83:[…]

   • 1905,P[aul] Vinogradoff,The Growth of the Manor, London:Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Lim.; New York, N.Y.:The Macmillan Co.,page141:

     Wealhs may also be placed on the same footing by being recognised as free gafolgelders of the king and being connected with a family land, a hide of their own, though their personal estimation will not reach that of Englishmen of equal social standing. This possible equation with thewealhs gives us also a clue as to the probable constitution of the family settled on the land.

FromProto-West Germanic*walh, fromProto-Germanic*walhaz, from aCeltic name also represented by LatinVolcae.

Having originally apparently referred to a neighboring Celtic tribe, it was broadened to refer to any inhabitant of the Western Roman Empire and then, in Britain, narrowed to refer to native Brythons, and later toWelsh people in particular. Owing to the presence of native Brythonic slaves in some areas, it also came to be used to refer to slaves (compare semantic formation ofSlav), though only alongside – never supplanting – its ethnic meaning.^[1] The narrowing of meaning away from the continental Germanic meaning ofRoman towards referring to Insular Celtic peoples was finalized by the late seventh century; rare occurrences of this term referring to Romans, such as the termRumwalas found inWidsith, are explained as archaisms inherited from an older tradition.^[2]

• IPA^(key):/wæ͜ɑlx/,[wæ͜ɑɫx]

wealh m (nominative pluralwēalas)

1. Celt
2. Welshperson
3. (rare)Roman
4. (rare)foreigner
5. (rare)slave
   • c. 995, Ælfric,Excerptiones de Arte Grammatica Anglice

     hoc sapiens mancipiumþēs wīsaweal

     hos sapiens mancipium this wiseslave

Stronga-stem:

• (Roman):Rōmānisċ
• (foreigner):elþēodiġ
• (slave):þēow

• Middle English:wælh,wale
• → English:wealh(learned)
• → Medieval Latin:wallus