clott

Forms

clott m^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *klott (“lump”), from Proto-Germanic *kluttaz (“clod, lump, ball”).^[1][2] Orel's only cognate is Middle High German klotz (“lump”); he takes the ⟨tt⟩ from an earlier ⟨*dh⟩ and compares Lithuanian gludùs (“smooth, soft”).^[2] Köbler sets up *klauta- instead and refers it, with a query, to Proto-Indo-European *gel- (“to ball up”), and he compares clūt.^[3] The MED compares the related words Middle English clod and Middle English clout.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is known only from glosses to Aldhelm.^[5][6] One of them, clottum, is in the Brussels manuscript of Aldhelm's prose De virginitate, whose Old English glosses are of the first half of the eleventh century; it glosses Latin massa in the phrase “a lump of pitch”.^[7][5][6]

Semantic evolution

Old English clott meant a “lump, mass”, and LangScape records it in charter bounds as “clod, hill”.^[8][9] The word lived on as Middle English clot, “a lump, especially of earth”;^[4] the sense of a clot of blood dates from the 1610s.^[10]

Timeline

• s. xi¹ – clottum glossing Latin massa in the Brussels Aldhelm glosses.^[7][5]
• c. 1230 – Middle English clot “lump” in the Ancrene Riwle.^[4]
• 1610s – English clot of blood.^[10]

Meanings

Noun

1. a lump, a mass.^[5][8]
2. (charter bounds) a clod, a hillock.^[9]

Descendants

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

Related words

• clūt

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 217
3. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. clott
4. ^ 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)
5. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 129
6. ^ a b Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
7. ^ a b 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. 596
8. ^ a b Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 71
9. ^ a b LangScape: The Language of Landscape: Reading the Anglo-Saxon Countryside, King's College London, langscape.org.uk
10. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com