óss

Forms

óss m (genitive óss, plural ósar) (strong a-stem)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *ōsaz (“mouth, river mouth”),^[1][2][3] for which de Vries and Köbler reconstruct Proto-Norse *ōsaʀ.^[4][5] The Germanic noun is otherwise known only in Norse, unless Old English ōr (“beginning, origin”) and ōra (“edge, bank”) belong to it, as Orel and Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon hold.^[2][6][3]

It continues the Indo-European word for “mouth”: Latin ōs (“mouth”), Sanskrit आस् (ā́s, “mouth”) and Hittite aiš (“mouth”).^[3][1] Closer in sense are ōstium (“entrance, river mouth”) and Lithuanian úostas (“river mouth, harbour”).^[6][4] The older handbooks start from a root Proto-Indo-European *ōus-, *əus- (Pokorny 784), which would also cover the Slavic word for “mouth”;^[6][7] Wiktionary gives Proto-Indo-European *h₃éh₁os,^[1] and Kroonen, reckoning with an old mobile s-stem, leaves open which laryngeals the root had.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest record is runic: an antler from Fishamble Street in Ireland, which Rundata dates to about 1000, reads hurn hiartaR la a ys aR, normalised Horn hjartar lá á ósi ár “a deer's antler lay at the mouth of a river”.^[8] In the manuscripts ONP's first citation is of 1220: þeir como til oꜱens “they came to the river mouth”.^[9]

Semantic evolution

Nearly all of ONP's citations mean the mouth or outlet of a river or lake, or an estuary; a single one, in Snorra Edda, may mean the source.^[9] Faulkes glosses one instance as the outlet where a river comes out of a cleft, not its mouth at the sea,^[10] and Zoëga explains the saying at ósi skal á stemma “a river must be dammed at its óss” with the sense “fountain-head”.^[11] The laws use it of a boundary: in Grágás a new mouth breaking through a man's foreshore does not move the old boundary, which the old óss still marks.^[12][9] It is frequent in place-names, such as Niðaróss in Norway and the Danish towns now called Aarhus and Randers.^[12] Skaldic poets used the word for water in kennings for gold, such as “fire of the river mouth”.^[13][14] It was also the name of the rune for ó.^[15][16]

The word lives on as Icelandic ós and Swedish os.^[6][17] De Vries lists loans in the Orkney and Shetland dialects, in Scots and in the Hebrides.^[4] Cox accepts Scottish Gaelic òs (“outlet of a loch or river”) as a Norse loan in Scottish Gaelic, on the evidence of place-names that combine it with the Gaelic article.^[18]

Timeline

• c. 1000 – á ósi on the antler from Fishamble Street, Ireland.^[8]
• 1220 – oꜱens “the river mouth”, ONP's first manuscript citation.^[9]
• 1225–1250 – ose, osenom, osenn in DG 8 II.^[19]
• 1250 – nyia ósa “new river mouths” in the law of Grágás.^[9]
• 1320–1350 – óss, ósinum in the Laxdæla saga of AM 132 fol.^[20]
• 1325 – the uncertain sense “source” in Snorra Edda.^[9]

Meanings

Noun

1. the mouth or outlet of a river or lake, an estuary.^[9][11][21]
2. a source, fountain-head (uncertain).^[9][11]
3. the name of the rune for ó.^[15][16]

Word family

• áróss
• fjarðaróss
• lœkjaróss
• merkióss
• vatnsóss

Descendants

• Danish os^[1]
• Faroese ósi^[1]
• Icelandic ós^[1]
• Norwegian Bokmål os^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk os^[1]
• Old Swedish ōs^[1]
• Swedish os^[1]

Related words

• ósi

Usage notes

The same spelling has two other, rarer words: óss “god”, a form of áss, and a poetic adjective óss “sparkling”.^[22][5][10] The pronoun oss “us” is a different word.^[4]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 290
3. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 394
4. ^ a b c d de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 421
5. ^ a b Köbler, Gerhard, Altnordisches Wörterbuch, online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary database copy), p. s.v. óss
6. ^ a b c d Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. ós
7. ^ Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling, p. s.v. *ōsaz
8. ^ a b Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. IR 12
9. ^ a b c d e f g h Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. óss
10. ^ a b Faulkes, Anthony (2011), A New Introduction to Old Norse III: Glossary and Index of Names, 4th ed., London: Viking Society for Northern Research, p. s.v. óss
11. ^ a b c Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. óss
12. ^ a b Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 473
13. ^ Sveinbjörn Egilsson (1860), Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, Hafniæ: Societas regia antiquariorum septentrionalium, p. 633
14. ^ Meissner, Rudolf (1921), Die Kenningar der Skalden, Bonn & Leipzig, p. 232
15. ^ a b Fritzner, Johan (1886–1896), Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, 2nd ed., Kristiania, p. s.v. óss
16. ^ a b Hægstad, Marius; Torp, Alf (1909), Gamalnorsk ordbok med nynorsk tyding, Kristiania: Det norske samlaget, p. 327
17. ^ Hellquist, Elof (1922), Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Lund, p. s.v. os
18. ^ Cox, Richard A. V. (2024–2026), Old Norse Loan-Words in Scottish Gaelic, Clann Tuirc, richardavcox.scot/ONlwSG, p. s.v. òs
19. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. DG 8 II
20. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 132 fol
21. ^ Baetke, Walter (1965–1968), Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, Berlin (digital ed. Greifswald 2006), p. 473
22. ^ Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. óss