fneosan

Forms

fnēosan (strong class 2v; third-person singular present fnīest, past singular fnēas, past plural fnuron)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *fneusan, from Proto-Germanic *fneusaną (“to sneeze”).^[1] Orel lists Old Norse fnýsa (“to sneeze”), Middle Dutch fniesen and Middle High German pfnūsen as cognates.^[2] The Old Norse verb also means “snort, blow out”.^[3][4]

Köbler and Holthausen connect it with Proto-Indo-European *pnew- (“to pant, breathe”) (Pokorny 838), and Orel calls it probably related to Ancient Greek πνέω (pnéō, “to blow, breathe”).^[5][6][2] Wiktionary adds that the word was probably felt to be imitative, as its initial consonants vary across Germanic, and Etymonline calls the Germanic base imitative.^[1][7] Holthausen puts it with Old English fnora (“sneezing”), and Köbler with fnǣst (“breath”).^[6][5]

Toller's Supplement gives the past plural and the past participle with ⟨r⟩ for the ⟨s⟩ of the present.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Toller's Supplement gives the verb with its principal parts but with no quotation, referring to the NED's fnese; the noun fnēosung (“a sneezing”) glosses Latin sternutatio in Ælfric's Glossary.^[8][9] Holthausen glosses the verb “pant, sneeze”.^[6]

It lived on as Middle English fnesen “sneeze, wheeze”, recorded from the end of the fourteenth century.^[10] Middle English snesen came from or replaced it, and gave English sneeze.^[10][7]

Timeline

• a1398 – Middle English fnese “to sneeze” in Trevisa's translation of Bartholomaeus.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. to sneeze.^[8][11]
2. to pant, breathe hard.^[6][5]

Word family

• fnēosung

Descendants

• Middle English snesen (→ English sneeze; Scots sneeze; Scots sneesh)^[1]

Related words

• fnora
• fnǣst

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 109
3. ^ Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 163
4. ^ Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. fnýsa
5. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. fnéosan
6. ^ a b c d Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 110
7. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 227
9. ^ Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 296
10. ^ 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)
11. ^ Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 82