felan

Forms

fēlan (weak class 1; third-person singular present fēleþ, past singular fēlde, past plural fēldon)^[1] Köbler heads it fœ̄lan, with the spelling ⟨œ⟩ of the umlauted vowel, and the Durham Ritual gloss has foele.^[2][3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *fōlijan (“to feel”).^[1] Its cognates are Old Frisian fēla, Old Saxon gifōlian and Old High German fuolen, and the Old High German verb is recorded from about 800.^[4][2][5] The verb has correspondences only in West Germanic; Old Norse falma (“to grope, feel”) is put with it as a form of another ablaut grade.^[5]

Orel takes it as a derivative of Proto-Germanic *fallaną (“to fall”) and compares the semantics of English “to fall in love” and of the Baltic verbs for “fall” and “find”.^[4] Köbler connects it with Proto-Indo-European *pelem- (“to swing, shake”) (Pokorny 801).^[2] The EWA treats the link of the Old Norse verb with a Gothic adjective meaning “terrified” as doubtful, and the possible connection with Ancient Greek πελεμίζω (pelemízō, “to shake”) belongs to that Gothic and Norse group, not to this verb.^[5] Wiktionary calls the origin unknown and mentions *pelh₁- (“to stroke”), Latin palpō (“to stroke”) and Ancient Greek ψηλαφάω (psēlapháō, “to feel, grope for”) as possible relatives.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest dated record is in Bald's Leechbook, copied in the middle of the tenth century: Sume lator felað þara læcedoma, sume raþor “some feel the remedies later, some sooner”.^[6][7][3] The forms fele in the Vespasian and Junius Psalter glosses, ðæt ic in ne fele for Latin “ut non inhaeream”, belong to fēolan (“to stick, cleave”), not to this verb.^[7][8]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth and Toller define it as “to feel, perceive, touch”, taking a genitive of the thing felt.^[8] In two riddles of the Exeter Book it is used of perceiving something by touch: Feleþ sona mines gemotes “she soon feels my meeting” and Hi ðæs felaþ “they feel it”.^[8][7] The Durham Ritual gloss renders Latin “sentiant” with it, and the medical texts use it of a patient's feeling a remedy or of the stomach's feeling.^[3] Nerthus counts it among the primitive (underived) verbs, with the meanings “to touch, feel; perceive”.^[9] The word is rare: the DOE Corpus has only about two dozen certain instances.^[7]

The word lived on as Middle English felen, now English feel, which in Middle English covers feeling by touch, sensing and perceiving.^[10][1]

Timeline

• s. x med. – Sume lator felað þara læcedoma “some feel the remedies later” in Bald's Leechbook.^[6][7]
• s. x² – Feleþ sona mines gemotes in a riddle of the Exeter Book.^[11][7]
• s. x² (c. 970) – foele for Latin “sentiant” in the Durham Ritual gloss.^[12][3]

Meanings

Verb

1. to feel, to perceive by touch; to touch.^[8][2]
2. to perceive, sense, notice.^[8][1]

Word family

• ġefēlan
• unfēlende

Descendants

• Middle English felen (→ English feel; Scots fele)^[1]

Related words

• ġefēlnes

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. fœ̄lan
3. ^ a b c d Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 209
4. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 109
5. ^ a b c Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de
6. ^ 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. 412
7. ^ 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
8. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 274
9. ^ Nerthus: An Online Lexical Database of Old English, Universidad de La Rioja, nerthusproject.com (derivational paradigms, via the Nerthus Project's open data), p. s.v. fēlan
10. ^ 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)
11. ^ 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. 223
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. 204