tacan

Forms

tacan (strong class 6; third-person singular present tæcþ, past singular tōc, past plural tōcon)^[1]

Etymology

It is a late loan, borrowed from Old Norse taka (“to take”).^[2][1][3] Durkin counts it among the few Norse loans of real importance recorded in Old English itself: it appears in two manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (D and the Peterborough Chronicle, E), in one homily and in the compound oftacan (“to catch up with”).^[4] Wiktionary dates the borrowing to about 1100.^[1]

Wiktionary derives the Norse verb from Proto-Germanic *tēkaną (“to touch; to take”), the source also of Gothic 𐍄𐌴𐌺𐌰𐌽 (tēkan, “to touch”).^[1] Orel takes the verb as an ablaut form of *takanan and compares Tocharian B täk- (“to touch”), from a root *dēg-.^[5] Köbler gives the Germanic verb as *takan, with a doubtful connection to Proto-Indo-European *dēg- (“to seize, touch”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is first recorded in manuscript D of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in the middle or second half of the eleventh century, in the annal for 1072: þa menn ealle he toc, and dyde of heom þæt he wolde “he took all the men, and did with them what he wished”.^[7][8] Where D has toc here and in the annal for 1075, manuscript E has native verbs (nam, ateah).^[9]

Semantic evolution

In the Chronicle the verb means to seize or capture people and goods by force: hi tocon mycele æhta and foron aweg “they took much property and went away”.^[10] A late text has tacan on “to touch”, of oil touching water, a use that matches Old Norse taka á.^[10]

As Middle English taken it gradually ousted the native niman: first in the East Midlands, the North-West Midlands and the North, much later in the South-West Midlands and the South;^[4][3] nim survived in parts of England until the fifteenth century.^[4][3] The verb is now English take.^[11]

Timeline

• s. xi² – þa menn ealle he toc in the annal for 1072 of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D.^[7][8]
• c. 1100 – the date Wiktionary gives for the borrowing.^[1]

Meanings

Verb

1. to take, seize, capture.^[9][12][6]
2. tacan on: to touch.^[10][13]

Descendants

• Middle English taken (→ English take; Scots tak; Scots ta)^[1]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 341
3. ^ a b c 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)
4. ^ a b c Durkin, Philip (2014), Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 182
5. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 406
6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. tacan
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. 318
8. ^ a b 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 Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. 966
10. ^ a b c Bosworth, Joseph; Toller, T. Northcote (1898), An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press; Toller, T. Northcote (1921), Supplement, p. Suppl. 719
11. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ Sweet, Henry (1896), The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 192
13. ^ Nerthus: An Online Lexical Database of Old English, Universidad de La Rioja, nerthusproject.com (derivational paradigms, via the Nerthus Project's open data)