ears

Forms

ears m (strong a-stem; genitive singular earses, nominative plural earsas)^[1] Also written ærs.^[1][2] The Cleopatra glossary has the genitive earses (Ani þæs earses).^[3][4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *ars, from Proto-Germanic *arsaz (“arse”).^[1][5] The noun appears as Old Norse ars (also rass), Old Frisian ers, Old Saxon ars and Old High German ars.^[5][6][7] De Vries explains the second Old Norse form as a metathesis due to taboo.^[8]

Orel derives it from Proto-Indo-European *orsos, the source also of Ancient Greek ὄρρος (órrhos, “rump”), and compares Old Irish err (“tail”).^[6] Kroonen reconstructs *h1ors-o- but finds the Old Irish word uncertain, since its e-grade can't be explained from an o-stem.^[5] Köbler gives the root as *ers- (“hind part, tail”) (Pokorny 340).^[9]

Before /r/ and a consonant the vowel was broken: Proto-Germanic *arsaz became *ærs and then the Old English form.^[10] Ringe and Taylor use the contrast of this word with gærs (“grass”), which has metathesis but no breaking, as evidence for a distinct diphthong /ea/.^[11]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first dated record is in the third of the Cleopatra glossaries (Cotton Cleopatra A. iii, of the second quarter or middle of the tenth century), where þæs earses glosses Latin “ani”.^[12][3][4] Toller's Supplement cites the same gloss from Wright and Wülcker.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth and Toller define the word as the buttocks or hind part, and as the anus.^[13] It is rare in the record, with four occurrences in three texts.^[4] In the charter bounds it is used of the land: the bounds of King Edward's grant of Taynton (Oxfordshire) in 1059 run on beafolces ears, and LangScape glosses the word there as a rounded hill.^[14][15][4] That charter survives in a single sheet of the mid-eleventh century, which some scholars take for the original and others for a later copy.^[14] The word also forms compounds, among them openærs “medlar”, earsende and earsþerl.^[13][2]

The word lived on as Middle English ars, used of the anus and the buttocks, now English arse.^[16][17]

Timeline

• s. x²/⁴ or x med. – þæs earses glossing “ani” in the Cleopatra glossaries.^[12][4]
• 1059 – on beafolces ears, of a hill, in the bounds of King Edward's charter for Taynton.^[14][4]
• c. 1390 – Middle English ers in Piers Plowman and Chaucer.^[16]

Meanings

Noun

1. the buttocks, the hind part; the anus.^[13][18][9]
2. (charter bounds) a rounded hill.^[15]

Word family

• openærs
• earsende
• earsgang
• earsling
• earsþerl

Descendants

• Middle English ars (→ English arse; English ass; Scots ers)^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 19
3. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 173
4. ^ a b c d e f Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
5. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 35
6. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 25
7. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 86
8. ^ de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 14
9. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. ears
10. ^ Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 180
11. ^ Ringe, Don; Taylor, Ann (2014), The Development of Old English, A Linguistic History of English II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 198
12. ^ 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. 268
13. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 235
14. ^ a b c 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 1028
15. ^ a b LangScape: The Language of Landscape: Reading the Anglo-Saxon Countryside, King's College London, langscape.org.uk
16. ^ a b 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)
17. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
18. ^ Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 97