stincan

Forms

stincan (strong class 3; third-person singular present stincþ, past singular stanc, past plural stuncon)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-West Germanic *stinkwan, from Proto-Germanic *stinkwaną (“to thrust, clash; to stink”).^[1][2] The West Germanic languages have the verb with the sense of smell, as Old Saxon stinkan and Old High German stinkan, while Gothic 𐍃𐍄𐌹𐌲𐌵𐌰𐌽 (stigqan, “to hit, clash”) and Old Norse støkkva (“to leap, spring, flee”) keep a sense of violent movement.^[2][3][4] Bosworth and Toller already set the Gothic and Norse verbs beside the Old English sense "to spring, leap".^[5]

Kroonen reconstructs a present with a nasal infix, *sté-n-gʷ-e-, and compares Latin restinguō (“to push back, suppress”) and Lithuanian sténgti (“to exert oneself”).^[2] Köbler instead refers it to Proto-Indo-European *steug- (“to push, strike”).^[6][4] The noun stenċ "smell" belongs to the same verb.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest dated record is a gloss in the Corpus Glossary, written in the first half of the ninth century: stonc renders “exaltauit”.^[7][8] The same gloss (as stanc) stands in the Épinal–Erfurt collection, where Pheifer identifies the Latin as a miswriting of “exhalauit” “breathed out”, from a passage of Orosius on a smell; the verb thus first appears in the neutral sense of giving off an odour or vapour.^[9][5]

Semantic evolution

In most of the texts the verb means to give off a smell of any kind, good or bad, and the kind of smell is often added: the Old English Martyrology says of a woman that all her clothing stanc swa ælces cynnes ricels “smelled like every kind of incense”, and Bald's Leechbook has a child that stince fule “smells foully”.^[10][11][8] The Junius Psalter gloss uses it of perceiving a smell, nosa habbað & ne stincað “they have noses and smell not”.^[12][8][13] In two poems it describes rapid movement instead: in an Exeter Book riddle dust stonc to heofonum “dust rose up to the heavens”, and in Beowulf the dragon stonc ða æfter stane, which Klaeber reads as "sniffed along the rock", following the scent, while Bosworth and Toller and Clark Hall take it as "moved rapidly".^[5][14][15]

Old English still used it for sweet smells, but the sense of an offensive smell, already present in Old English, prevailed by the middle of the thirteenth century; the verb lives on as Middle English stynken, now English stink.^[16][17]

Timeline

• s. ix¹ – stonc glossing “exaltauit” (for “exhalauit”) in the Corpus Glossary.^[7][8]
• s. x¹ – the lime ongon ... mid ungemete stincan “began to give off fumes beyond measure” in the Old English Orosius.^[18][8]
• s. x¹ – nosa habbað & ne stincað in the Junius Psalter gloss.^[12][8]
• s. x² – dust stonc to heofonum in a riddle of the Exeter Book.^[19][8]
• s. x/xi – stonc ða æfter stane in the Beowulf manuscript.^[20][14]
• s. x ex. – a sinful soul that fule stince “stinks foully” in Ælfric's first series of Catholic Homilies.^[21][8]

Meanings

Verb

1. to give off a smell or vapour, of any kind; to exhale.^[5][22]
2. to smell sweet, be fragrant.^[23][6]
3. to stink, smell bad.^[23][1]
4. to perceive a smell; to sniff, follow a scent.^[14][13]
5. (poetic) to rise, whirl up, of dust; to move rapidly.^[5][15][6]

Word family

• ġestincan

Descendants

• Middle English stynken (→ Scots stink; English stink)^[1]

Related words

• stenċ

References

1. ^ a b c d e Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 480
3. ^ a b Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 325
4. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
5. ^ a b c d e Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 921
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. stincan
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. 76
8. ^ a b c d e f g h Healey, Antonette diPaolo; Price Wilkin, John; Xiang, Xin, eds. (2009), Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus, Toronto: Dictionary of Old English Project
9. ^ Pheifer, J. D. (1974), Old English Glosses in the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. no. 361
10. ^ 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. 281
11. ^ 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. 412
12. ^ 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. 515
13. ^ a b Nerthus: An Online Lexical Database of Old English, Universidad de La Rioja, nerthusproject.com (derivational paradigms, via the Nerthus Project's open data)
14. ^ a b c Fulk, R. D.; Bjork, Robert E.; Niles, John D., eds. (2008), Klaeber's Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 4th ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press (glossary), p. s.v. stincan
15. ^ 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. 424
16. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
17. ^ 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)
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. 249
19. ^ 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. 223
20. ^ 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
21. ^ 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. 407
22. ^ Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 322
23. ^ a b Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 712