hecg

Forms

heċġ f (strong ō-stem; genitive singular heċġe, nominative plural heċġa)^[1] Also hegg.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *haggju, from Proto-Germanic *hagjō (“hedge”).^[1][3][4] Its cognates are Old High German heckia (also heggia), whence German Hecke, and Middle Dutch hegge, whence Dutch heg.^[3][5][6] Old Norse heggr (“bird cherry”) continues a masculine form of the same stem.^[3]

Kroonen groups the word with haga (“hedge, enclosure”) and its cognates, words that first meant an enclosure made of shrubs or briars; outside Germanic he compares Latin caulae (“railing, lattice barrier”) and Welsh cae (“enclosure”).^[3] Köbler and Etymonline give the root as Proto-Indo-European *kagʰ- (“to seize; wickerwork, fence”) (Pokorny 518).^[4][6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest dated record is in the Parker manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (CCCC 173, from about 900), in the annal for 547 on the building of Bamburgh: seo wæs ærost mid hegge betyned & þaræfter mid wealle “it was first enclosed with a hedge and afterwards with a wall”.^[7][8][2]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth–Toller defines the word as "hedge, fence".^[2] It is mostly a word of charter bounds, where hedges mark the line: a grant of 969 in an eleventh-century copy runs to þære hegce, ondlonges ðære hegge.^[9][8][10]

Etymonline notes that the word first meant any fence, living or artificial.^[6] As Middle English hegge it named a hedge of bushes marking fields, a thicket, an enclosure and a barricade, and it is English hedge.^[11]

Timeline

• s. ix/x – Bamburgh mid hegge betyned “enclosed with a hedge” in the Parker Chronicle, annal 547.^[7][8]
• 969 – ondlonges ðære hegge “along the hedge” in the bounds of a charter, in an eleventh-century copy.^[9][8]
• c1275 – Middle English hegge in The Owl and the Nightingale.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. a hedge, a fence.^[2][4][1]

Descendants

• Middle English hegge (→ English hedge; Scots hedge)^[1]

Related words

• haga
• hege

References

1. ^ a b c d e 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. Suppl. 526
3. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 198
4. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. hėcg
5. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
6. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ 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. 83
8. ^ a b c d Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
9. ^ a b 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 1319
10. ^ LangScape: The Language of Landscape: Reading the Anglo-Saxon Countryside, King's College London, langscape.org.uk
11. ^ 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)