libban

Forms

libban (weak class 3; third-person singular present leofaþ, past singular lifde, past plural lifdon)^[1] Also lifian, lifġan and leofian;^[1][2] Etymonline calls lifian the Anglian and libban the West Saxon form.^[1][2] It is one of the four verbs of weak class III, with habban, seċġan and hyċġan.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *libbjan, from Proto-Germanic *libjaną (“to live”).^[1] The verb is shared by Gothic 𐌻𐌹𐌱𐌰𐌽 (liban), Old Norse lifa (“to live; to be left”), Old Frisian libba, Old Saxon libbian and Old High German lebēn.^[4][5][6]

Kroonen writes the verb Proto-Germanic *libēn-, a stative to Proto-Germanic *lībaną (“to stick”), and explains “to live” as grown out of “to remain”; the Old Norse verb still means “to be left” as well.^[4][7] Wiktionary and Köbler follow the same line back to Proto-Indo-European *leyp- (“to stick, smear”).^[1][8] Holthausen and de Vries instead set up a root *leibh- whose only certain outside relative is Latin caelebs (“unmarried”), explained by Collitz as “living alone”.^[5][6] Nerthus treats it as formed from the noun līf “life”.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is first recorded in the mid-ninth-century gloss of the Vespasian Psalter: “Feond soðlice mine lifgað”, “but my enemies live”, for the Latin “Inimici autem mei uiuent” of Psalm 37:20.^[10][11] A Kentish agreement of 867×870, held to be an original, settles land at Chart “Gif Eadweald leng lifige ðonne Cyneðryð”, if Eadweald lives longer than Cynethryth.^[12][11]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth and Toller's Supplement first gives “to be alive, have life”, then “to stay alive after a risk of death, be saved”: the Pastoral Care says of a man that he must flee and so live.^[13] The verb also means to live in a certain way (þeawum lyfde lived virtuously, in Beowulf;^[14] be urum larum libbaþ they live by our teachings) and to live on or by something (on alms, on balsam).^[14][15] The present participle libbende “living” is used as an adjective, and the Blickling homilies speak of God ðe lyfaþ and rixaþ, who lives and reigns.^[13][15] Clark Hall adds “to experience” and “to be, exist”.^[16]

It continued as Middle English liven, now English live.^[2]

Timeline

• s. ix med. – feond soðlice mine lifgað in the Vespasian Psalter gloss.^[10][11]
• 867×870 – gif Eadweald leng lifige in a Kentish agreement surviving as an original.^[12][11]
• 890×897 – sceal fleon … and libbe “must flee and live” in the Pastoral Care (Hatton 20).^[13][17]
• s. x/xi – þeawum lyfde “lived virtuously” in the Beowulf manuscript.^[14][18]

Meanings

Verb

1. to live, be alive.^[13][8]
2. to stay alive, survive, be saved from death.^[13]
3. to live in a given way, pass one's life.^[14][19]
4. to live on or by something, subsist.^[14][19]
5. to experience; to be, exist.^[16]

Word family

• mislibban
• unlifiġende

Descendants

• Middle English lyven (→ English live; Scots leeve)^[1]

Related words

• līf
• belīfan
• lǣfan

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ Hogg, Richard M.; Fulk, R. D. (2011), A Grammar of Old English, vol. 2: Morphology, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, p. § 6.122
4. ^ a b Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 336
5. ^ a b Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 200
6. ^ a b de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 355
7. ^ Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. lifa
8. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. libban
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. libban
10. ^ 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. 329
11. ^ 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
12. ^ 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 1200
13. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 614
14. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 636
15. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 639
16. ^ 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. 217
17. ^ 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. 499
18. ^ 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. 344
19. ^ a b Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 129