dysig

Forms

dysiġ (comparative dysigra, superlative dysigast)^[1]

• Also dyseg, disig, dysi; syncopated dysgum, dysge.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *dusīg, from Proto-Germanic *dusigaz (“dazed”).^[1][3] Köbler lists Middle Low German dusich (“dazed, giddy”) and Old High German tusīg (“dull, foolish”) beside it.^[3][4] Wiktionary derives the Proto-West Germanic adjective from the verb *dusēn (“to swoon, be dizzy”) with the suffix *-g.^[1] Kroonen takes the first meaning of that verb to be “to lose one's senses”, whence “to fall asleep” and “to go mad”, and connects Latin furō (“to rave”) and Lithuanian dùsas (“short breath”).^[5] Köbler and Etymonline refer the root, with doubt, to Proto-Indo-European *dʰew- (“to rise in a cloud, blow”).^[4][6]

Hogg and Fulk count it among the disyllabic adjectives with the suffix -iġ.^[7] Köbler and Kroonen place dwǣs (“foolish”) in the same family.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is the Old English gloss of the Vespasian Psalter, added in the middle of the ninth century: at Psalm 91:6 Wer unwis ne oncnaweð & dysig ne ongiteð ða renders “Vir insipiens non cognoscet et stultus non intellegit ea”, “the unwise man does not know, and the fool does not understand these things”.^[8][9] Here the adjective stands as a noun for “fool”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

The adjective means foolish, unwise or stupid, and glosses Latin “stultus”, “insipiens” and “fatuus”; used as a noun, it means a fool.^[2][4] The neuter noun means folly, error and ignorance: the Pastoral Care speaks of wretches who rejoice hiera ágnes dysiges “in their own folly”, and the Boethius has hefig dysig “a grievous folly”.^[10] In the DOE Corpus it is above all a prose word, found in 58 prose texts against 6 poems.^[9]

It lived on as Middle English dusi, “foolish” and also “giddy”, recorded mostly in early southern texts, and is now English dizzy.^[11][6] Etymonline notes that the old sense “foolish” survived only in dialect after the thirteenth century.^[6]

Timeline

• s. ix med. – dysig “a fool” for “stultus” in the Vespasian Psalter gloss.^[8][9]
• 890×897 – ðæt hit self dysig sie “that it is itself foolish”, and dysig “folly”, in the Pastoral Care.^[12][9][10]
• s. x med. – the adjective and the noun in the Old English Boethius.^[13][9]
• s. x³/⁴ – dysge in the Lindisfarne gloss of Matthew.^[14][9]

Meanings

Adjective

1. foolish, unwise, stupid.^[2][4]
2. (substantive) a fool.^[1][2]

Noun

1. folly, foolishness.^[10][15]
2. error, ignorance.^[10]

Word family

• dysegian
• dysiġnes
• dyslīc
• yfeldysiġ

Descendants

• Middle English dysy (→ English dizzy; Scots desy; Scots dussie)^[1]

Related words

• dwǣs

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 222
3. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
4. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. dysig
5. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 111
6. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 4.44
8. ^ 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. 329
9. ^ a b c d e f g Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
10. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 223
11. ^ 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. ^ 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. 499
13. ^ 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. 296
14. ^ 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. 291
15. ^ Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 67