wadan

Forms

wadan (third-person singular present wætt, past singular wōd, past plural wōdon)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *wadaną (“to go, to wade”).^[1][2] The strong verb is shared with Old Norse vaða (“to wade”), Old Frisian wada (“to wade through”) and Old High German watan (“to wade”).^[2][3][4][5]

Outside Germanic it is connected with Latin vādō (“to go”) and the noun vadum (“ford”).^[3][2] Köbler sets up the root Proto-Indo-European *u̯ādʰ- (“to go, to stride”), after Pokorny.^[6] The noun wæd (“ford, shallow water”) belongs to the same Germanic family.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest manuscript with the verb is the Old English Boethius in Cotton Otho A. vi, of the mid-tenth century, where it is used of people who follow their own desires: “þa þe on eallum þingum wadað on hiora agenne willan, & æfter hiora lichoman luste irnað”, “those who in all things go along after their own will and run after the lust of their body”.^[7][8][9]

Semantic evolution

In Old English the verb means to go, pass or advance, of people on foot, of warriors and of ships, and it is used without an object, with prepositions such as ofer and þurh, and with an accusative of the way travelled (wadan wræclāstas “to tread the paths of exile”); the figurative use in the Boethius is the only one of its kind that Bosworth and Toller cite.^[9] The Beowulf poet uses it of Grendel advancing under the clouds and of Wiglaf going through the smoke.^[10] It is mostly a word of the poetry: the DOE Corpus has 16 tokens in 11 texts, eight of them poems.^[8]

As Middle English waden it still meant “to go, advance” in Middle English, but by about 1200 it was used specifically of walking into or through water, the sense of English wade.^[11][12]

Timeline

• s. x med. – wadað on hiora agenne willan “go after their own will” in the Old English Boethius (Cotton Otho A. vi).^[7][8]
• s. x² – Wadað widlastas “you tread the wide paths” in Andreas in the Vercelli Book.^[13][8]
• s. x² – wadan wræclastas in The Wanderer in the Exeter Book.^[14][9]
• s. x/xi – wōd under wolcnum “advanced under the clouds” in the Beowulf manuscript.^[15][10]
• c. 1225 – Middle English waden, of worms working their way into the body, in Body and Soul.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. to go, pass, proceed; to advance, of people, warriors and ships.^[9][10]
2. with an accusative: to tread or travel a path.^[9]
3. (figurative) to go on, follow one's own will.^[9]
4. to wade, stride.^[6][16]

Word family

• onwadan
• þurhwadan
• bewadan
• oferwadan

Descendants

• Middle English waden (→ Scots wad; Scots wade; English wade)^[1]

Related words

• wæd

References

1. ^ a b c d Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 438
3. ^ a b Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 378
4. ^ Hofmann, Dietrich; Popkema, Anne Tjerk (2008), Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. s.v. wada
5. ^ Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. vaða
6. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Altenglisches Wörterbuch, 4th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. wadan
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. 296
8. ^ 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
9. ^ 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. 1148
10. ^ 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. wadan
11. ^ 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)
12. ^ Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
13. ^ 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. 704
14. ^ 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
15. ^ 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
16. ^ Clark Hall, J. R. (1960), A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, 4th ed., with a supplement by H. D. Meritt, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 391