gera

Forms

gera (singular past indicative gerði, plural past indicative gerðu, past participle gerðr) (weak class 1 (long stem))^[1] Runic spellings: kerþi,^[2] karþi^[3] and gærþo.^[4] Danish runic kauruan on the Sædinge stone.^[5]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną (“to prepare, make ready”),^[1][6] a factitive verb from the adjective Proto-Germanic *garwaz (“ready”), which survives as Old Norse gǫrr.^[6][7] The cognates mean “to prepare, equip”: Old English gierwan (“to prepare, clothe, adorn”), Old Saxon garuwian and Old High German garawen (“to prepare, equip”).^[6][7][8]

The origin of the adjective is disputed.^[8][7] Kroonen and Wiktionary take it as a prefixed form, *ga- with Proto-Germanic *arwaz (“ready, quick”);^[6][1] de Vries finds this unattractive, and Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon rejects it.^[8][7] Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon prefers the root Proto-Indo-European *gʷʰer- (“to heat”), the root of Latin formus (“warm”) and Ancient Greek θερμός (thermós, “warm”), so that “ready” would come from “cooked through”; de Vries puts the same comparison forward as uncertain.^[7][8]

The many Old Norse forms, gerva, gøra, gørva, gjǫra and gjǫrva, are not fully explained;^[8][1] de Vries mentions the view that ⟨e⟩ for ⟨ø⟩ arose in unstressed position.^[8]

Earliest recorded meaning

Menota's earliest record is the Norwegian runic inscription N 839, dated 966–1066, with the past tense kerþi.^[2] The Oddernes stone, which Menota dates 980–1015, has karþi: Eyvindr gerði kirkju þessa ... á óðali sínu “Eyvindr built this church ... on his ancestral land”.^[3][9] In manuscripts ONP's first citation is of 1175: smiþr sa es hus vill gera “a builder who wants to make a house”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

In the Norse languages the verb has a wider and more general sense than in West Germanic, because it took over the place of the verb for “do” (English do, German tun), which Norse lost.^[7] ONP divides it into “to do, act, behave”, “to carry out, bring about”, “to make, build, write”, “to pay”, “to appoint”, “to inflict on”, “to send”, “to decide” and others, with an auxiliary use.^[10] It is one of the most frequent verbs in all kinds of text: ONP has 2,709 citations, Menota 5,255 tokens.^[10][11]

The verb lives on as Icelandic gera and gjöra, Swedish göra and Danish gøre,^[7][12] and was borrowed into Middle English as geren, garen, the dialect word gar “to make”.^[8]

Timeline

• 966–1066 – kerþi on the Norwegian runestone N 839.^[2]
• 980–1015 – karþi “built” on the Oddernes stone.^[3]
• 1175 – hus ... gera “make a house” in a manuscript of the Elucidarius.^[10]
• 1200 – gera “to carry out, perform” in the Icelandic Homily Book.^[10]

Meanings

Verb

1. to do, act, behave (in some way).^[10][13]
2. to carry out, perform, bring about, arrange (a feast, a journey, a sacrifice).^[10][13]
3. to make, produce, build; to write (a book).^[10][13]
4. to pay, render.^[10]
5. to make (someone) into something, appoint.^[10]
6. to prepare, equip.^[10]
7. to inflict (something) on (someone); to cause.^[10]
8. to beget.^[10][13]
9. to send (off), dispatch.^[10][13]
10. (law) to decide, fix (a fine); to arbitrate.^[10][13]
11. to have (something) done.^[10]
12. (auxiliary) with an infinitive: ef hón gørði koma “if she did come”.^[10][13]

Word family

• gerð
• gervi
• afgera
• algera
• endrgera
• fyrirgera
• fullgera
• misgera
• umgera
• nýgera

Descendants

• Icelandic gera^[1]
• Faroese gera^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk gjera^[1]
• Swedish göra^[1]
• Danish gøre^[1]
• Middle English gerren^[1]
• Scots gar^[1]

Related words

• gǫrva

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. N 839
3. ^ a b c Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. N 210
4. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. N 182
5. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. DR 217
6. ^ a b c d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 170
7. ^ a b c d e f g Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. gera
8. ^ a b c d e f g de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 163
9. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. N 210
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. gera
11. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0)
12. ^ Hellquist, Elof (1922), Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Lund, p. s.v. göra
13. ^ a b c d e f g Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. gørva