hitta

Forms

hitta (singular past indicative hitti, plural past indicative hittu, past participle hittr) (weak class 1 (long stem))^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *hittijaną (“to come upon, find”),^[1] a verb found only in North Germanic; Old English hittan is taken to be a loan from Norse.^[2][3][4] Its further origin is uncertain, and the explanations differ.^[5][4]

One view makes it an assimilated form of a verb related to Old English hentan (“to pursue, seize”) and huntian (“to hunt”); de Vries and Falk–Torp object that the cluster nt never appears, not even in East Scandinavian.^[5][6] Another compares Welsh cwyddo (“to fall”) and Old Irish cíth (“shower of rain”), so that the first sense would be “fall upon”; de Vries calls this very uncertain.^[5][3] Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon prefers a base with a suffix -atjan to one in -jan, from a root Proto-Indo-European *kei-d- (“to fall upon”), perhaps related to Middle Dutch heien (“to strike, push”) and Latin caedō (“to strike, kill”), while calling the whole uncertain;^[4] Wiktionary follows the same root.^[1] Holthausen's root “to split”, cited by de Vries, leaves the change of meaning unexplained.^[5] Gersum also reports a derivation from a Proto-Norse verb made on an adverb meaning “hither”.^[7]

Earliest recorded meaning

ONP's first records are in the Icelandic Homily Book, which it dates to about 1200, in the senses “find” and “meet”: hitta þar sveinenn “to find the boy there”, and þegar er þau hittosc ioakím oc anna. þa rann hon a háls buanda sínom oc kyste hann “as soon as they met, Joachim and Anna, she ran to her husband's neck and kissed him”.^[8] IcePaHC dates the text of the Homily Book to 1150.^[9]

Semantic evolution

ONP orders the senses from meeting someone or seeking a person out, the commonest, through finding or coming upon something, finding one's way, and hitting a mark, to hitting upon an idea.^[8] The phrase hitta at máli is meeting face to face to talk, and the reciprocal hittask “to meet one another” is common, in Eddic poetry also of hostile meetings.^[8][10] In the Norwegian laws it is also catching someone in a wrongful act.^[11]

Icelandic hitta, Faroese hitta and Danish hitte keep “meet, hit upon”, while Swedish hitta means “to find”.^[4][2] Through late Old English hyttan and Middle English hitten it gave English hit; the sense moved from “come upon” to “strike” in late Old English.^[12][13][7]

Timeline

• 1150 – hitta in the Icelandic Homily Book, by IcePaHC's dating of the text.^[9]
• 1200 – hitta þar sveinenn “find the boy there” in the Icelandic Homily Book, by ONP's dating.^[8]
• 1200–1225 – hitta in the Norwegian AM 619 4to and hitti in the Icelandic AM 677 4to.^[14][15]
• 1225 – hitta “meet, seek out” in ONP's Ágr.^[8]
• 1250–1300 – hittuz “they met” in GKS 2365 4to.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. to meet (someone), to seek out or visit a person;^[8][17] hitta at máli to meet and speak with.^[8][17]
2. to find, come upon, run into (something).^[8][18]
3. to find one's way.^[8][17]
4. to hit, strike (of a weapon).^[8][17]
5. to hit upon (an idea); hitta sér ráð to find a way out.^[8][18]
6. to get, receive.^[8]
7. (reciprocal, hittask) to meet one another.^[17][19]

Descendants

• Icelandic hitta^[1]
• Faroese hitta^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk hitte^[1]
• Swedish hitta^[1]
• Danish hitte^[1]
• Old English hittan^[1][12]
• Middle English hitten (→ English hit)^[12][7][13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Hellquist, Elof (1922), Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Lund, p. s.v. hitta
3. ^ a b Torp, Alf (1909), Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit (Fick, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 4th ed., vol. 3), Göttingen, p. 90
4. ^ a b c d Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. hitta
5. ^ a b c d de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 229
6. ^ Falk, Hjalmar; Torp, Alf (1910–1911), Norwegisch-dänisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg, p. s.v. hitte
7. ^ a b c Dance, Richard; Pons-Sanz, Sara; Schorn, Brittany, eds., The Gersum Project: The Scandinavian Influence on English Vocabulary, gersum.org
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. hitta
9. ^ a b Wallenberg, Joel C.; Ingason, Anton Karl; Sigurðsson, Einar Freyr; Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur, Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus, version 0.9
10. ^ Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 253
11. ^ Hertzberg, Ebbe (1895), Glossarium, in Norges gamle Love indtil 1387, vol. 5, Christiania, p. 289
12. ^ 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)
13. ^ a b Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
14. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 619 4to
15. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 677 4to
16. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. GKS 2365 4to
17. ^ a b c d e Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. hitta
18. ^ a b Baetke, Walter (1965–1968), Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, Berlin (digital ed. Greifswald 2006), p. 254
19. ^ 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. hitta