Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T04:59:16.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reassessing the semantic history of OE brēad / ME brēd1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 April 2016

SARA M. PONS-SANZ
SARA M. PONS-SANZ*
Affiliation:
School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University, John Percival Building, Colum Drive, Cardiff CF10 3EU, United Kingdompons-sanzs@cardiff.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Our etymological understanding of PDE bread has been influenced, to a considerable extent, by Otto Jespersen's comment that ‘An Englishman cannot thrive or be ill or die without Scandinavian words; they are to the language what bread and eggs are to the daily fare.’ This article analyses the evidence behind the possibility that PDE bread might represent a Norse-derived semantic loan, i.e. that OE brēad acquired the meaning ‘bread’, which was more frequently expressed by OE hlāf, because of the influence of its Viking Age Norse cognate (cp. OIc brauð ‘bread’). On the basis of an in-depth study of the attestations of OE brēad and hlāf and their early Middle English reflexes, as well as the use of their cognates in various Germanic languages, the article challenges the traditional view that OE brēad originally meant ‘piece, morsel of bread’ and concludes that Norse influence is not needed in order to account for the semantic history of PDE bread.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 47 - 67
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I am very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and Prof. Laurel Brinton for their comments and suggestions in connection with a previous version of this article. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (project FFI2014-56583-P).

References

Allard, Joseph & North, Richard (eds.). 2014. Beowulf and other stories: A new introduction to Old English, Old Icelandic and Anglo-Norman literatures, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bammesberger, Alfred. 1990. Die Morphologie des urgermanischen Nomens (Untersuchungen zur vergleichenden Grammatik der germanischen Sprachen 2). Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Bammesberger, Alfred. 2002. On the prehistory of Old English hlǣfdige . Language Sciences 24, 213–19.Google Scholar
Banham, Debby. 2004. Food and drink in Anglo-Saxon England. Stroud: Tempus.Google Scholar
Björkman, Erik. 1900–2. Scandinavian loanwords in Middle English, 2 vols. (Studien zur englischen Philologie 7 and 11). Halle: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Bjorvand, Harald & Lindeman, Fredrik Otto. 2007. Våre arveord: Etymologisk ordbok, 2nd edn. Oslo: Novus.Google Scholar
Bosworth, Joseph & Northcote Toller, T.. 1898. An Anglo-Saxon dictionary. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boutkan, Dirk & Siebinga, Sjoerd Michiel. 2005. Old Frisian etymological dictionary (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 1). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Brink, Stefan. 2008. Lord and lady – bryti and deigja: Some historical and etymological aspects of family, patronage and slavery in early Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England. The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies delivered at University College London, 17 March 2005. London: University College London. Available at http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Brink%20Coke%20lecture.pdf.Google Scholar
Brown, Michael Joseph. 2000. ‘Panem nostrum’: The problem of petition in the Lord's Prayer. Journal of Religion 80, 595–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, M. L. 1983. Bald's Leechbook: Its sources and their use in its compilation. Anglo-Saxon England 12, 153–82.Google Scholar
Cathey, James E. (ed.). 2002. Heliand: Text and commentary. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.Google Scholar
Clark Hall, J. R. 1960. A concise Anglo-Saxon dictionary, 4th edn, with a supplement by Herbert D. Meritt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Clayton, Mary & Magennis, Hugh. 1994. The Old English lives of St Margaret (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 9). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cockayne, Thomas Oswald (ed.). 1864–66. Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Dance, Richard. 2003. Words derived from Old Norse in early Middle English: Studies in the vocabulary of the south-west Midland texts. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.Google Scholar
Della Volpe, Angela. 2004. On Gothic gahlaiba and Latin companion: An excursus in historical linguistics methodology. In Fulton, Gordon et al. (eds.), LACUS Forum XXX: Language, thought and reality, 5–28. Houston: LACUS.Google Scholar
Dieffenbacher, Julius. 1907. Deutsches Leben im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert: Realkommentar zu den Volks- und Kunstepen und zum Minnesang, 2 vols. Berlin: Göschen.Google Scholar
[DOE =] Dictionary of Old English in electronic form, A–G, 2007. Ed. Antonette diPaolo Healey et al. Toronto: University of Toronto.Google Scholar
[DOEC =] Dictionary of Old English web corpus, 2007. Ed. Antonette diPaolo Healey et al. Toronto: University of Toronto. Available at www.doe.utoronto.ca/pages/pub/web-corpus.html [accessed from 7 April 2015 to 10 September 2015].Google Scholar
[Douay-Rheims Bible =] The holy Bible Douay-Rheims version, with revisions and footnotes by Bishop Richard Challoner, 1749–52. 1899. Baltimore: John Murphy. Available at www.drbo.org [accessed from 7 April 2015 to 10 September 2015].Google Scholar
Duby, Georges. 1968. Rural economy and country life in the medieval west. Columbia: University of South Caroline Press.Google Scholar
Durkin, Philip. 2014. Borrowed words: A history of loanwords in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dyce, Elton J. 1931. Fermentation and crystalization of honey. Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station 528, 3–78.Google Scholar
[EWA =] Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen. 1988–. Ed. Albert Lloyd et al. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Falk, Hjalmar. 1925. Svensk ordforskning. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 41, 113–39.Google Scholar
Feist, Sigmund. 1939. Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gotischen Sprache, 3rd edn. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Fulk, R. D. 2012. An introduction to Middle English: Grammar and texts. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
Grienberger, Theodor von. 1900. Untersuchungen zur gotischen Wortkunde (Keisserliche Akademie der wissenschaften Sitzungsberichte: Philologisch-historische Klasse 142). Vienna: Gerold.Google Scholar
Grønvik, Otto. 1981. Runene på Tunesteinen: Alfabet, språkform, budskap. Oslo: Oslo University Press.Google Scholar
Hagen, Ann. 1992. A handbook of Anglo-Saxon food: Processing and consumption. Pinner: Anglo-Saxon Books.Google Scholar
Hargreaves, Henry. 1969. Middle English lyrics in an Aberdeen University library manuscript. Aberdeen University Review 43, 146–56.Google Scholar
Hill, Betty. 1977. The twelfth-century Conduct of Life, formerly the Poema Morale or A Moral Ode. Leeds Studies in English new ser. 9, 97–144.Google Scholar
Hill, Thomas D. 2002. The Old English dough riddle and the power of women's magic: The traditional context of Exeter Book riddle 45. In Hall, Thomas N. et al. (eds.), Via Crucis: Essays on early medieval sources and ideas in memory of J. E. Cross, 50–60. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.Google Scholar
Hofstetter, Walter. 1987. Winchester und der spätaltenglische Sprachgebrauch (Münchener Universitäts-Schriften 14). Munich: Wilhelm Fink.Google Scholar
Hogg, Richard M. 2004. North Northumbrian and south Northumbrian: A geographical statement? In Dossena, Marina & Lass, Roger (eds.), Methods and data in English historical dialectology (Linguistic Insights: Studies in Language and Communication 16), 241–55. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Holt, Robert (ed.). 1878. The Ormulum, with notes and glossary of Dr R. M. White, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Holthausen, Ferdinand. 1929. Gotica. Indogermanischen Forschungen 47, 329–33.Google Scholar
Holthausen, Ferdinand. 1974. Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd edn. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
James, Montague Rhodes. 1932. A catalogue of medieval manuscripts in the university library, Aberdeen. Cambridge: University Press.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1938. Growth and structure of the English language, 9th edn. Leipzig: Teubner.Google Scholar
Johannesson, Nils-Lennart. 2006. Bread, crumbs and related matters in the Ormulum . In McConchie, R. W. et al. (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2005 symposium on new approaches in English historical lexis (HEL-LEX), 69–82. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Ker, N. R. 1990 [1957]. Catalogue of manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Clarendon Press; rpt. with a supplement from Anglo-Saxon England 5 (1977), 121–31. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Kitson, Peter. 2006. Review of Malcolm Godden, Ælfric's homilies: Introduction, commentary and glossary, 2000. English Studies 87, 617–30.Google Scholar
Kleiber, Wolfgang & Hellgardt, Ernst (eds). 2004–. Otfrid von Weißenburgh: Evangelienbuch, 2 vols. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Kluge, Friedrich. 2011. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, ed. Seebold, Elmar, 25th edn. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Kohnen, Thomas. 2010. Religious discourse. In Jucker, Andreas H. & Taavitsainen, Irma (eds.), Historical pragmatics, 523–47. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohnen, Thomas. 2012. Prayers in the history of English: A corpus-based study. In Kytö, Merja (ed.), English corpus linguistics: Crossing paths, 165–80. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Kotake, Tadashi. 2016. Did Owun really copy from the Lindisfarne Gospels? Reconsideration of his source manuscript(s). In Fernández Cuesta, Julia & Pons-Sanz, Sara M. (eds.), The Old English glosses to the Lindisfarne Gospels: Author, language and context (Anglia Book Series 51), 377–95. Berlin: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Krause, Wolfgang. 1966. Die Runeninschriften im älteren Futhark, mit Beiträgen von Herbert Jahnkuhn (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen: Philologisch-historische Klasse, 3rd ser. 65), 2 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
Kroonen, Gus. 2013. Etymological dictionary of Proto-Germanic (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
[ LAEME =] A linguistic atlas of early Middle English, 1150–1325. 2013–. Compiled by Margaret Laing. Version 3.2. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Available at www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme2.html [accessed from 7 April 2015 to 10 September 2015].Google Scholar
Laing, Margaret. 1992. A linguistic atlas of early Middle English: The value of texts surviving in more than one version. In Rissanen, Matti et al. (eds.), History of Englishes: New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics (Topics in English Linguistics 10), 566–81. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lehmann, Winfred P. (ed.). 1986. A Gothic etymological dictionary. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Leonhardi, Günther (ed.). 1905. Kleinere angelsächsische Denkmäler (Bibliothek der angelsächsischer Prosa). Hamburg: Henry Grand.Google Scholar
Liberman, Anatoly & Mitchell, J. Lawrence. 1993. An analytic dictionary of English etymology. American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures 5, 47–92.Google Scholar
Masser, Achim (ed.). 1994. Die lateinisch-althochdeutsche Tatianbilingue Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen Cod. 56 (Studien zum Althochdeutschen 25). Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht.Google Scholar
[MED =] Middle English dictionary . 1952–2001. Ed. Hans Kurath et al. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Gary D. 2012. External influences on English: From its beginnings to the Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. Ronald (trans.). 1992. The Heliand: The Saxon gospel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mustanoja, Tauno F. 1960. A Middle English syntax, part I: Parts of speech (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 23). Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Nokes, Richard Scott. 2004. The several compilers of Bald's Leechbook . Anglo-Saxon England 33, 51–76.Google Scholar
[ OED 1989 =] Oxford English dictionary. 1989. Ed. John A. Simpson & Edmund Weiner, 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
[ OED 2000– =] Oxford English dictionary. 2000–. Ed. John A. Simpson & Michael Proffitt, 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available at www.oed.com [accessed from 7 April 2015 to 10 September 2015].Google Scholar
Orel, Vladimir. 2003. A handbook of Germanic etymology. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Palmatier, Robert A. 1969. A descriptive syntax of the Ormulum (Janua Linguarum: Studia Memoriae Nicolai van Wijk Dedicata: Series Practica 74). The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Passionarius Galeni: Galeni pergameni passionarius a doctis medicis multum desideratus . 1526. Lyon.Google Scholar
Pelteret, David A. E. 1995. Slavery in early medieval England: From the reign of Alfred until the twelfth century (Studies in Anglo-Saxon History 7). Woodbridge: Boydell.Google Scholar
Pfeifer, Wolfgang (ed.). 1989. Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, 3 vols. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Pokorny, Julius. 1959. Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2 vols. Bern and Munich: Francke.Google Scholar
Pons-Sanz, Sara M. 2007. Norse-derived vocabulary in late Old English texts: Wulfstan's works, a case study. Odense: University Press of South Denmark.Google Scholar
Pons-Sanz, Sara M. 2013. The lexical effects of Anglo-Scandinavian linguistic contact on Old English (Studies in the Early Middle Ages 1). Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar
Pons-Sanz, Sara M. 2015. Identifying and dating Norse-derived terms in medieval English: Approaches and methods. In Askedal, John Ole & Nielsen, Hans Frede (eds.), Early Germanic languages in contact (NOWELE Supplement Series 27), 203–21. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Porter, David W. 1999. On the Antwerp-London glossaries. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 98, 170–92.Google Scholar
Pulsiano, Phillip. 2001. Old English glossed psalters: Psalms 1–50 (Toronto Old English Series 11). Toronto: Toronto University Press.Google Scholar
Pulsiano, Phillip (ed. and trans.). 2014. Old English poetry: An anthology. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press.Google Scholar
Puschmann, Theodor (ed. and trans.). 1878–79. Alexander von Tralles, 2 vols. Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert.Google Scholar
Robertson, A. J. 1939. Anglo-Saxon charters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rudolf, Winfried. 2012. Riddling and reading: Iconicity and logogriphs in Exeter Book riddles 23 and 45. Anglia 130, 499–525.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schrader, O. 1917–29. Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, ed. Nehring, A., 2 vols. Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Schrijver, Peter. 1991. The reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European laryngeals in Latin (Leiden Studies in Indo-European 2). Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Solopova, Elizabeth. 1996. The metre of the Ormulum . In Toswell, Mary Jane & Tyler, Elizabeth M. (eds.), Studies in English language and literature: ‘Doubt wisely’, papers in honour of E. G. Stanley, 423–39. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
[ TOE =] A thesaurus of Old English. 2000. Ed. Jane Roberts et al., 2 vols. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Talbot, C. H. 1965. Some notes on Anglo-Saxon medicine. Medical History 9, 156–69.Google Scholar
de Vaan, Michiel. 2008. Etymological dictionary of Latin and other Italic languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7). Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
The vocabulary of English place-names . 1997–. Ed. David N. Parsons et al. Nottingham: Centre for English Name Studies.Google Scholar
de Vries, Jan. 1961. Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Wawn, Andrew. 2000. The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the old north in nineteenth-century Britain. Cambridge: Brewer.Google Scholar
Wood, Francis A. 1910. Gothic etymology. Modern Language Notes 25, 72–6.Google Scholar
Yanushkevich, Irina. 2010. The domain of bread in Anglo-Saxon culture. Acta Linguistica 4, 99–107.Google Scholar