fearh

Forms

fearh m (nominative plural fēaras) (strong a-stem)^[1] Épinal and Corpus glossaries: faerh.^[2][3] Other spellings: færh, ferh.^[4]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *farh, from Proto-Germanic *farhaz (“pig, piglet”).^[1][5] Its closest relative is Old High German farah or farh, a neuter noun found only in glosses and the Salic law.^[5][6] Holthausen adds the Swedish dialect word farre (“boar”) and the Low German diminutive Middle Low German verken.^[7]

The word goes back to Proto-Indo-European *pórḱos (“pig”), the source of Latin porcus and of the Slavic and Celtic words for a pig.^[1][7] Köbler and Pokorny connect it with the root Proto-Indo-European *perḱ- (“to tear, dig up”), making it the “rooter”.^[8] Kroonen points to Ancient Greek πόρκος (pórkos, “fishing net”) and an Armenian word for “hunt, game”, and suggests that the word first named the wild boar rather than the farm animal.^[5] Proto-Germanic /a/ was broken to ⟨ea⟩ before ⟨rh⟩, spelled ⟨ae⟩ in the oldest glosses.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is in the oldest English glossary: the Épinal Glossary, of the late seventh or about 700, glosses Latin porcellus “piglet” with faerh, next to porcaster foor, another word for a young pig.^[9][3][10] The Corpus Glossary of the early ninth century has the same gloss.^[11][3]

Semantic evolution

Almost all the records are glosses: porcellus in the early glossaries, and suilli vel porcelli rendered by the plural fearas in Ælfric's Glossary.^[4][12] Pheifer notes that the word may also lie behind ferh in line 305 of Beowulf.^[10] Sweet glosses it “pig, boar”, Clark Hall “little pig, hog”.^[13][14] It is the second part of stīġfearh (“a pig kept in a sty”), found in the laws.^[12][15]

The word survives as English farrow; the sense “a litter of pigs” is first recorded in the 1570s.^[16]

Timeline

• s. vii ex. or vii/viii – porcellus faerh in the Épinal Glossary.^[9][3]
• s. ix¹ – porcellus faerh in the Corpus Glossary.^[11][3]

Meanings

Noun

1. a young pig, a piglet.^[4][8][14]
2. a pig, a boar.^[13]

Word family

• stīġfearh
• ġefearh

Descendants

• Middle English *farow (→ English farrow; Scots ferrae; Scots ferry)^[1]

Related words

• fōr

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Pheifer, J. D. (1974), Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. lxxi
3. ^ 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
4. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 272
5. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 129
6. ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de
7. ^ a b Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 99
8. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. fearh
9. ^ 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. 610
10. ^ a b Pheifer, J. D. (1974), Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 114
11. ^ 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. 76
12. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 207
13. ^ a b Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 77
14. ^ 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. 112
15. ^ Liebermann, F. (1906), Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, vol. II.1: Wörterbuch, Halle: Niemeyer, p. 68
16. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com