eggja

Forms

eggja (weak)^[1]

Etymology

It is a verb from Old Norse egg (“edge”),^[1][2] so that its first sense is “to sharpen, give an edge”.^[3] Gersum sets up a Proto-Germanic verb *agjōjan- formed on the noun, with Old English ecgan (“to sharpen”), Old Frisian eggia (“to drive, fence”) and Middle Low German eggen (“to sharpen”) beside it.^[4][5]

The noun is from Proto-Germanic *agjō (“edge, blade”), a feminine stem to the root Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- (“sharp”),^[6] related to Latin aciēs (“sharp edge”) and Ancient Greek ἀκίς (akís, “point”).^[7][2]

Earliest recorded meaning

ONP's earliest dated citation is from the Elucidarius of 1175, in the sense “move, prompt”: at eige egiaþe ... ohlvþna menn ... at hafna nvto verke “so that it should not urge disobedient men to give up useful work”.^[8] The Icelandic Homily Book of about 1200 has Diofoll má eggia til illz. en néyþa eige “the devil can urge to evil, but not compel”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The literal sense “sharpen, whet” is rare, with one citation in ONP, and in verse;^[8][3] the figurative “egg on, goad” is the usual one, from spurring men to battle to stirring the heart or tempting someone to do something, the commonest group in ONP.^[8] The person urged is in the accusative and the deed in the genitive, eggja e-n e-s, or with til or á;^[9][10] láta at eggjask is to let oneself be egged on.^[9][10] ONP's citations are most frequent in religious works.^[8]

The verb lives on in Icelandic eggja and Swedish egga.^[5] It passed into Middle English eggen, whence egg “to incite”, recorded from about 1200.^[11][4][12]

Timeline

• 1175 – egiaþe “should urge” in the Elucidarius.^[8]
• c. 1200 – eggia til illz “urge to evil” in the Icelandic Homily Book.^[8]
• 1200–1225 – eggjar, eggjaði in AM 677 4to.^[13]
• c. 1200 – English egg “to incite”, from the Norse verb.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. to sharpen, whet.^[8][14]
2. to egg on, goad, spur on (to battle).^[8][10]
3. to set (someone) against (someone), stir up bad blood.^[8]
4. to move, prompt, tempt, urge strongly (to do something).^[8][9]
5. (reflexive) to spur oneself on, be eager; to egg one another on.^[8][10]

Word family

• eggjan
• áeggjan
• bjarneggjan
• frameggja

Descendants

• Icelandic eggja^[1]
• Faroese eggja^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk eggja^[1]
• Norwegian Bokmål egge^[1]
• Swedish egga^[1]
• Danish ægge^[1]
• Middle English eggen^[12][4]
• English egg^[11]

Related words

• egg
• hvetja

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. egg
3. ^ a b Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 98
4. ^ a b c Dance, Richard; Pons-Sanz, Sara; Schorn, Brittany, eds., The Gersum Project: The Scandinavian Influence on English Vocabulary, gersum.org, p. s.v. eggyng
5. ^ a b de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 95
6. ^ Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 4
7. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 3
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. eggja
9. ^ a b c Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 117
10. ^ a b c d Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. eggja
11. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
12. ^ 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)
13. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 677 4to
14. ^ Baetke, Walter (1965–1968), Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, Berlin (digital ed. Greifswald 2006), p. 101