mycg

Forms

myċġ m (strong a-stem; genitive singular myċġes, nominative plural myċġas)^[1]

• Early spellings: mygg in the Épinal and Corpus Glossaries.^[2]
• Other spellings: mygg, mygc, micge.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *muggju, from Proto-Germanic *mugjō (“midge, gnat”).^[1] Orel sets it beside Old Saxon muggia and Old High German mugga, with a word for “mosquito” in Old Swedish.^[4] Bosworth and Toller compare the same Old Saxon word, mucca and German Mücke.^[3] Etymonline adds Swedish mygga and Dutch mug, and finds no certain cognates outside Germanic.^[5] Wiktionary sets Old Norse mý beside these as a form of the same origin with a different consonant.^[1]

Köbler connects it with a Germanic noun for the midge and with a root Proto-Indo-European *mū- for gnats and flies.^[6] Wiktionary analyses the Proto-Germanic form as a diminutive in Proto-Germanic *-gjō and compares Latin musca (“fly”) and Lithuanian musė (“fly”);^[1] Orel calls it distantly related to Proto-Germanic *mūsō, and Etymonline reports the view that it rests on an imitative root for humming insects.^[4][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word appears in the oldest English glosses: the Épinal Glossary, written at the end of the seventh century or about 700, has mygg for Latin “scnifes”, gnats.^[7][2] The Corpus Glossary, of the early ninth century, gives mygg for Latin “culix” with the note “longas tibias habet”, it has long legs.^[8][2]

Semantic evolution

Almost the whole record is in glosses: the DOE Corpus finds six instances in five texts, all of them glossaries.^[2] They render Latin culex “gnat” and sciniphes “gnats”, and one psalter gloss puts it for cynomya.^[3][6] The Leechdoms name gnættas and micgeas together, as pests that a herb kills.^[3] Bosworth and Toller record a weak feminine mycge beside the masculine.^[3]

The word continued as Middle English migge “gnat, midge”,^[9] now English midge.^[5]

Timeline

• s. vii ex. or vii/viii – mygg for Latin “scnifes” in the Épinal Glossary.^[7][2]
• s. ix¹ – mygg for Latin “culix” in the Corpus Glossary.^[8][2]
• a1500 – Middle English mydge in a copy of Rolle's Psalter.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. a midge, gnat, a small fly.^[3][10][6]

Descendants

• Middle English migge (→ Scots mige; Scots midge; English midge)^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ 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
3. ^ a b c d e f Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 703
4. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 275
5. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. mycg
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. 610
8. ^ 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
9. ^ 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)
10. ^ Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 243