reofan

Forms

rēofan (strong class 2v; third-person singular present rīefþ, past singular rēaf, past plural rufon)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *reufan, from Proto-Germanic *reufaną (“to tear”).^[1][2] Its nearest relative outside West Germanic is Old Norse rjúfa (“to break, rip up”).^[3][2][4]

Orel relates the verb to the root Proto-Indo-European *reup-, which also gave Latin rumpō (“to break”).^[2] Köbler traces it to the same root, meaning “to tear, break”, and cites Pokorny's page 870 for it.^[5][6] Wiktionary writes the root as *Hrewp- (“to break”).^[1]

It is a strong verb of the second class: past singular rēaf, past plural rufon, past participle rofen.^[7][8] Seebold notes that Old English records the verb only in the past participle, “broken”, and in the participle of berēofan, “robbed”; the noun of the same form meaning “spoils” and the verb berēafian (“to rob”) are formed from other grades of the same root.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is recorded once, in the poem Exodus in the Junius manuscript, whose first part was written in the second half of the tenth century: randbyrig wæron rofene “the ramparts were broken”.^[10][7][11] The other forms the DOE Corpus matches with it belong to other words: reof stands over Latin “leprosus” in a heading of the Lindisfarne gloss, and Rufe is a man addressed by name in Ælfric's Life of Apollinaris.^[11]

Semantic evolution

Bosworth and Toller give the senses “to break, rend, rive”, and Sweet “to break, tear”.^[7][12] The compound berēofan “to deprive, bereave” carried the root's sense of robbery.^[7][9]

The verb itself did not survive: Middle English reven “to rob, plunder” and the English word reave continue the related rēafian.^[13][14]

Timeline

• s. x² – randbyrig wæron rofene “the ramparts were broken” in Exodus, in the Junius manuscript.^[10][7][11]

Meanings

Verb

1. to break, rend, tear.^[7][12][5]

Word family

• berēofan

Related words

• rēaf
• rēafian

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 303
3. ^ de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 449
4. ^ Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 501
5. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. rēofan
6. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
7. ^ 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. 791
8. ^ Nerthus: An Online Lexical Database of Old English, Universidad de La Rioja, nerthusproject.com (derivational paradigms, via the Nerthus Project's open data)
9. ^ a b Seebold, Elmar (1970), Vergleichendes und etymologisches Wörterbuch der germanischen starken Verben, The Hague / Paris: Mouton, p. 378
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. 513
11. ^ a b c 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 Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 162
13. ^ 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)
14. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com