Obscured figurae etymologicae and Word Origins. Two Examples Involving Gothic – Springer

The figura etymologica is a rhetorical device in which the slots of a grammatical construction are filled by cognate lexemes, as in English she sang a song or he told a tale. As well as such cognate accusatives, other constructions occur, such as a manly man. In examples such as these, it is not disputed that the elements are etymologically related.

This article suggests that similar, but not transparent, figures of speech can sometimes be used in reverse, as it were, to identify cognates that have not already been recognized. Gothic features in both examples.

1. 1.

   The fact that the Gothic translation of Matthew 6/19, 20 ni huzdjaiþ izwis huzda ana airþai … iþ huzdjaiþ izwis huzda in himina … ‘Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, … But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, …’ is closely matched by Old English (Rushworth 1) ne hydeþ eow hord in eorþe … hydeþ eow þonne hord in heofunum suggests not only that this might be an old collocation (especially in view of the synchronically aberrant meaning of the Old English verb here: ‘store up’ rather than ‘conceal’), but that the verbs in question are identical, that is OE hȳdan (and congeners), like Goth. huzdjan, descended from PGmc. *huzdijan, a phonetically unexceptional derivation and one superior to the current etymology.

2. 2.

   The Gothic verb wilwan ‘seize, snatch, plunder’ occurs three times with ‘wolf’ wulfs, twice in the phrase wulfōs wilwandans ‘rapacious wolves’. In view of the appropriate semantics, de Saussure’s idea (Gotique wilwan. Mémoires de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 6, 358, 1889b) that wilwan is a survival of the derivational base of *u̯ĺ̥k^wos, the Indo-European word for ‘wolf’, is re-examined. This entails consideration of several words associated with *u̯ĺ̥k^wos, which itself is interpretable as the substantivization of a posited thematic adjective **u̯l̥k^wós, with a presumed meaning along the lines of ‘rapacious’.

1. 1.

   More elaborate instances occur, such as Shakespeare’s ‘With eager feeding food doth choke the feeder’.—Richard II II i,37. A specific type of figura etymologica is polyptoton, whereby a word is repeated in different cases or inflections.

2. 2.

   It must be borne in mind that the Old English is translating Latin, not Greek as is the Gothic version—although it makes little difference in practice, as the Latin words in question are adopted from the Greek.

3. 3.

   See DOE s.v. hȳdan sense a.ii. It may also be noted that hȳdan is not given by the DOE as one of the verbs with which hord regularly collocates (s.v. hord 1.b), although it does co-occur in Elene 1091 hord under hrusan þæt gehyded gen, / duguðum dyrne, deogol bideð ‘treasure under ground that, still hidden, concealed from-the-retainers, remains secret’. But, judging by Elene 217–218 hwær se wuldres beam, / halig under hrusan hyded wære ‘where the rood of glory, / the holy (thing) might be hidden under the earth’, the set phrase is rather (ge)hyded under hrusan.

4. 4.

   Other Old English Bible versions do not correspond. The Northumbrian Lindisfarne Gospels gloss reads 19 nællas gie gestrionaige iuh gestriono in eorðo … 20 strionas gie soðlice iuh striona in heofnum. The West Saxon gospels (Hatton MS) offer 19 Nellen ge goldhordian eow on eorðan goldhordas, … 20 Gold-hordiað eow soðlice gold-hordes on heofenan, featuring hordian, a later denominative creation from hord. All the quotations from Matthew in this note and (3) are from Skeat (1887, pp. 56–57; 248 for the Rushworth Latin).

   However, that quintessential writer of Late West Saxon, Ælfric, when citing the gospel passage, echoes the West Saxon version in the heavenly part: hórdiað eowerne goldhord on heofenum, but offers a crucial difference in the earthly part: Ne behyde ge eowerne goldhord on eorðan (ed. Godden, 1979, p. 63). Although other instances in the Catholic Homilies clearly mean ‘conceal’, ‘store, amass’ seems more appropriate here. The version printed by Napier (1883, pp. 286–287), part of Homily LV, formerly attributed to Wulfstan, is effectively identical, which is hardly surprising as it is Ælfrician; see Napier (1883, p. viii) and Jost (1950, p. 261).

5. 5.

   I realize the text is problematic; Gordon (1960, p. 45) calls it ‘[p]robably the most disputed passage of the poem’. Heretically, I wonder whether it might not read better if the second and third lines were transposed? However, line three could be a delayed parallelism.

6. 6.

   The meanings in the DOE entry for be–hȳdan under 3b ‘stop up, block’ are easy to explain from ‘store up’, as in ‘accumulate’.

7. 7.

   Parallel texts occur only in the Emsigo manuscripts (ed. Buma & Ebel, 1967) and they lack the lexeme hēda*: E1 VIII 36; E2 V 2; and E3 II 2.

8. 8.

   This is how van Helten took it in his Zur Lexicologie des Altostfriesischen (1907, p. 162 top + n. 3): ‘Die 3. sg. praes. ind. zu hēda = as. hōdian, ahd. huoten. Wegen der bedeutung vgl. mnd. behoeden “verstecken”’. On the confusion of the two verbs, see §2.4.2.

9. 9.

   The alternative –ū-vocalism, which runs right through the word-family, is mirrored by the duality of hōden and hūden found in Middle Low German (see §2.4.2), arguing for the loanword interpretation.

10. 10.

    A further supposed instance of hürten given in the Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch seems to be incorrectly assigned and most probably belongs to the verb hurten (adopted from French) 1 intr. ‘stoßend losrennen, (heran-) stürmen’ 2 tr. ‘etw./jmdn. (nieder-) stoßen’ to give the definition of that verb in Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch. It occurs in Der Göttweiger Trojanerkrieg, (ed. Koppitz, 1926) 14.613: Fraisse dir an dinem schiltt / Hie laider ist gehürdett and seems to mean: ‘Be concerned for yourself about your shield, / Unfortunately, it has been knocked down (= damaged?)’.

11. 11.

    The situation is identical with the older form MHG mürden ‘kill; strike’ beside younger morden, both denominative to the noun mord (< PGmc. *murþaⁿ) at different times.

12. 12.

    Any verb meaning ‘store something’ has the connotation ‘securely’ and this can readily encompass ‘store something in secret’, which is well on the way to ‘conceal, hide something’. Compare the meanings of Lat. recondō.

    English shows an archaism in preserving the older meaning alongside ‘conceal’ (see §2.2).

13. 13.

    For example de Vries (1879, p. 96); Mnl. Wb. s.v. huden; Onions et al. (1966) s.v. hide³; Kluge and Seebold (2011) s.v. Hort; Hellquist (1939) s.v. hydda expresses doubt: ‘osäker’.

14. 14.

    LIV² 358 s.r. √*keṷd ^h– comments in n 1: ‘Das gr. und besonders das iran. Material wäre gut mit *g^heṷd ^h– vereinbar’; the (Middle) Iranian initial otherwise needs to be explained by contamination. LIV² wishes to keep OE hȳdan separate, following Szemerényi (1980).

15. 15.

    So far as I know, Siebs was the first to suggest such an origin for the English and Frisian verbs (1901, p. 1259), although his further comparanda were incorrect. Klein (1979, p. 441 with n. 89) endorses Siebs’ basic etymology. Neither mentions the Matthew 6.19–20 locus.

16. 16.

    Rix’s explanation for custōs as *kudʱ–to–sd– as ‘beim Schatz sitzend’ (LIV² 359) is perhaps more ingenious than convincing.

17. 17.

    The North Germanic noun hydda etc. (Söderwall, 1884–1918, i 542) usually glossed as ‘hut’ is sometimes thought to belong to the alleged ‘conceal’ family of words (e.g. Hellquist, 1939 s.vv. hydda and hytta). It is, nonetheless, conceivable that, like its cognate Germ. Hütte, it does belong with *huzdaⁿ and *huzdijan after all and originally meant something like ‘storehouse’ and referred to a relatively small outbuilding.

18. 18.

    Concerning *keudʱ– in Germanic, Adams (1994) posits *daug-, a metathesized o-grade variant *dʱeuk– with Verner’s Law, which seems unlikely after a full-grade root, but it could just as easily be *dʱeugʱ-, metathesized from *gʱeṷdʱ– (cf. n. 14). On this base in Germanic, see also Dietz (2000) (without mention of Adams).

19. 19.

    The meaning is frequently given as ‘rob, räuben’, but this is inaccurate (see the examples below), and presumably stems from Streitberg’s glossary (1998, ii 175).

20. 20.

    The total attestation is as follows: simplex Jh 6.15; Mk 3.27; Mt 7.15; dis– MK 3.27; fra– Jh 10.29, 28, 12; Mt 11.12; 1Thes 4.17; LK 8.29; 2Cor 12.2, 4.

    The Greek words translated are: ἁρπάζειν, (dis-) δι-ἁρπάζειν, (fra-) also συν-ἁρπάζειν.

21. 21.

    Toch. B walkwe; OInd. vŕ̥ka-, YAv. vəhrka– (Hoffmann & Forssman, 2004, p. 92 §58ca & 112 §83A1); Goth. wulfs; Lith. vil̃kas; OCSl vlьkъ. Metathesized forms occur in Gk. λύκος; Lat. lupus (if it is a descendant, it has rural consonantism); and possibly OIr. luch– (McCone, 1985, pp. 175–176). A further variant appears in OAlb. ulk; and possibly the Old Irish name-element Olc– (see §3.7.2 for the phonology).

22. 22.

    Balto-Slavic offers a neat parallel in the family of Lith. liū̃tas ‘lion’. This is the substantivization of an adjective liū̃tas ‘wild, predatory, ruthless’ found in dialects, but obsolete in the standard language. The adjective, adopted from Slavic, is attested in Old Lithuanian in the phrase liū̃tas lẽvas ‘ferocious lion’ in the 1573 Wolfenbüttel Postil (8^r 26). (The noun lẽvas ‘lion’ is now obsolete.) The phrase is echoed by Old Belarusian ljutŭ levŭ, and the adjective is widespread in Slavic languages, e.g., Russ. лю́тый ‘ferocious, fierce, cruel’. Lehrman (1987, p. 17), recalling storytelling in his childhood, remarks that the Russian adjective can be used substantially ‘to refer to aggressive quadrupeds, such as “lion” …, “wolf”, “bear”, and “lynx”, and even a ferocious steed’.

23. 23.

    Thus Holthausen (1934, p. 125), Feist (1939, p. 564), Seebold (1970, p. 554), and Lehmann (1986, W–67); LIV² 675 sees Goth. wilwan as continuing a –u-present to √*u̯el– ‘turn’.

24. 24.

    It is possible that there had been a Germanic strong verb **wilwan with such a history, from which the Gothic weak verb –walwjan* ‘roll’ was derived, as de Saussure (1889b) notes.

25. 25.

    Producing this article would not have been possible without help generously given by a number of individuals, who do not thereby endorse its contents. I should like to thank: Alfred Bammesberger, Michele Bianconi, the editors of the Dictionary of Old English, Carla Falluomini, Anne Helene Feulner, Jay Jasanoff, Jarich Hoekstra, Ron Kim, Jesse Lundquist, Craig Melchert, Henrik Rosenkvist, Matteo Tarsi, Elizabeth Tucker, Anthony Yates, and the editors of this volume.

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Authors and Affiliations

1. University College London, London, UK

   Patrick Stiles

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Patrick Stiles .

Editors and Affiliations

1. Department of English, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA

   Joseph F. Eska

2. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany

   Olav Hackstein

3. Collegium Heliodori, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poznań, Poland

   Ronald I. Kim

4. World Languages, Minot State University, Minot, ND, USA

   Jean-François Mondon