þorp

Forms

þorp n (strong a-stem; genitive singular þorpes)^[1] Bosworth–Toller, Holthausen and Köbler class the word as masculine.^[2][3][4] Beside þorp stands the metathesised form þrop, the spelling of the Corpus Glossary.^[5][6][7]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *þorp, from Proto-Germanic *þurpą.^[1] The word is found across Germanic: Gothic 𐌸𐌰𐌿𐍂𐍀 (þaurp, “farmland”), Old Norse þorp (“isolated settlement”), Old Frisian thorp (also therp), Old Saxon thorp and Old High German dorf, all meaning "village" in the West Germanic languages.^[8][9][3]

Kroonen and Holthausen connect it with Lithuanian troba (“cottage, farmhouse”), Latvian trāba (“hut”), Old Irish treb (“hamlet, village”) and Middle Welsh tref (“town”), from a root Proto-Indo-European *treb-.^[8][3] Within Germanic, Kroonen adds, the word cannot be separated from Old Norse þyrpast (“to crowd, throng”), which points to an older sense "to gather";^[8][2] Bosworth and Toller had already supposed that the first idea was that of an assemblage, from the same Old Norse verb.^[8][2] Orel connects it instead with Proto-Germanic *þrepaną, and Köbler tentatively with the root Proto-Indo-European *twer- (“to turn, whirl”).^[9][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is first recorded in the Corpus Glossary (CCCC 144), written in the first half of the ninth century, where Conpetum tuun þrop glosses Latin “compitum”, a place where roads meet, with two English words.^[6][7][2] Bosworth and Toller see in the glosses the ideas of an assemblage of people, of the workers on an estate and of the estate itself.^[2]

Semantic evolution

The Gothic word means an estate or farmland, and in Old English the senses farm or estate and village or hamlet stand side by side.^[2][5][4] Besides Latin “compitum” the glosses render “fundus”, a landed estate.^[2] The word is rare in literary prose; it occurs chiefly in glosses, charters, wills and the Chronicle.^[7] Uninflected in its locative use it forms place names in -þorp, like -tūn and -stān.^[10]

The word lived on as Middle English thorp "village, hamlet, farmstead", which the MED derives from Old English þorp, þrop and, especially in names, from Old Norse þorp.^[11] Etymonline speaks of reinforcement from Old Norse.^[12] It survives as the archaic English word thorp and in place names.^[11][12]

Timeline

• s. ix¹ – Conpetum tuun þrop in the Corpus Glossary.^[6][7]
• c. 990×1001 – land æt þrope in the will of Æthelgifu, a single sheet of the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries held to be the original.^[13][7]
• a1121 – ealle þa þorpes þe ðærto lin “all the villages that belong to it” in the Peterborough Chronicle, entry for 963.^[11][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. a farm, an estate.^[5][4]
2. a village, a hamlet.^[2][5]
3. (glosses) rendering Latin “compitum”, a place where roads meet, and “fundus”, a landed estate.^[2]

Descendants

• Middle English thorp (→ English thorp)^[1]

Usage notes

Bosworth and Toller note that the place names in -thorp are found mostly in the parts of England settled by the Danes, so that their frequency there may owe more to Scandinavian than to English influence.^[2]

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 1064
3. ^ a b c Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 367
4. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. þorp
5. ^ a b c d Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 206
6. ^ a b c Gneuss, Helmut; Lapidge, Michael (2014), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographical Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 76
7. ^ a b c d e Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
8. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 553
9. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 430
10. ^ Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 2.18
11. ^ a b c Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
12. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
13. ^ The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, revised ed. by S. E. Kelly and R. Rushforth, King's College London / University of Cambridge, esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk, p. S 1497