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Old English ersc (Stubble-Field)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Fritz Mezger
Fritz Mezger*
Affiliation:
Bryn Mawr College
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Extract

Old English ersc belongs to OE. erian, Goth. arjan, Old Norse erja, O. Saxon erian, OHG. erren “to plough”; Lithuanian árti “to plough,” Old Slavonic orjǫ, Lat. aro, Middle Irish airim, Greek áρόω “I plough,” a dissyllabic basis, as may be seen by Greek áρo-τρoν Armenian araur (< Idgc. ar∂tro-) (and Lat. arātrum, which probably stands for arătrum), “plough” and by the accent in Lithuanian árti “to plough” and árklas “plough.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1931 , pp. 90 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1931

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References

page 91 note 1 That there existed in Old English a tendency to confuse the two prefixes æt- and ed in speech-consciousness can not be concluded with any certainty from the material: the meaning “again” for ed- appears in a long list of words composed with ed- (Sweet, St. D.); there are only a few exceptions: besides edwist —a case which stands quite by itself: eÐwítia “to reproach” besides ælwítan.eÐwítia is like Goth, idweitjan and OHG. itawīzzēn, itawīzōn formed on the noun: OE. edwīt, Goth. idweit, OHG. itawīz, itiwīz, itiwīzī, Old Low Frankish edwīt “repraoch, insult”; ætwítan is a compound of the strong verb OE. wītan, OS. wītan, OHG. wīzan “to repraoch, to blame” and æt is the prefix æt (Goth fraweitan “revenge” has also a prefix and besides a different meaning, whereas in OHG. wīzan as well as in farwīzan the meaning is the same, namely “to blame, to reproach, to punish”); æt apparently just as fra, far emphasizes the meaning of the simplex (compare the parallel OE. æteglan “to torment, to molest, Goth. us-aglian ”ὒπωπτἁζειν “ OE. eglan ”to torment, to molest“).

page 91 note 2 OHG. ās etc. is to be explained as ēdso- and not as ēd-to- (see J. Schmidt, Die Pluralbildungen der indogermanischen Neutra, 1889, p. 379; A. Fick, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, Dritter Teil, Falk-Torp, Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit, 1909, p. 24; Walde-Pokorny, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 1926–1930, I 119; R. Trautmann, Baltisch-Slavisches Wörterbuch, 1923, p. 66; E. Boisacq, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, 1916, p. 216; A. Walde, Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch,2 1910, p. 250). From a merely phonological point of view the derivation of OHG. ās etc. from ēd-lo-m is possible; however, the word has to be explained as s -formation on account of the non-germanic s -formations and perhaps still more on account of the Germanic s - (sl-, sk-, sn-) formations.