leggja

Forms

leggja (singular past indicative lagði, plural past indicative lǫgðu, past participle lagðr) (weak class 1 (short stem))^[1] Viking Age runic past lagi (lagði).^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *lagjaną (“to lay, put”),^[3][4] the causative of the verb that gave liggja “to lie”.^[5][6] Its cognates are Gothic 𐌻𐌰𐌲𐌾𐌰𐌽 (lagjan), Old English lecgan, Old Frisian ledza, Old Saxon leggian and Old High German leggen.^[3][7][8] Kroonen reconstructs the causative as Proto-Indo-European *logʰ-éie-, with the o-grade of the root,^[3] and the closest formation outside Germanic is Proto-Slavic *ložiti (“to lay”).^[4][7]

De Vries cites an optative ⟨lAgi⟩ in Proto-Norse from the Eggja stone as a form of the verb,^[5] but the edition in Rundata, which dates the stone to 650–700 after Grønvik, reads that passage differently.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The verb is on Viking Age runestones, undated, as in the Swedish fragment Ög Hov95;34, lagi stein “laid the stone”.^[2] The first manuscript record ONP dates is from 1175, in Eluc674, with the reflexive in the sense “to be added”: ma etke leggiasc viþ fognoþ þeira ne af takask “nothing can be added to their joy nor taken from it”.^[10]

Semantic evolution

From “to lay, put down” the verb took on many uses: laying nets, lowering sails, felling a man (leggja at velli), building fences and roads, fixing a meeting or a battle, and assessing a value.^[11][10] Used of animals it means “to give birth”, and impersonally of ice and snow leggr ís “ice forms”.^[6][12] Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon suggests that a few senses, such as “to decorate” and “to decide”, may go back to lost prefixed verbs.^[6] Falk and Torp trace the sense “to stab”, as in leggja spjóti til hans “to thrust at him with a spear”, to the Old Norse use, and Hellquist finds the same in Swedish lägga till ngn “to hit someone”.^[13][14]

ONP lists about thirty prefixed compounds, from af- to ør-.^[10] The verb continues as Icelandic leggja, Swedish lägga and Danish lægge.^[6][14]

Timeline

• Viking Age – lagi (lagði) “laid” on the Swedish runestone fragment Ög Hov95;34.^[2]
• 1175 – the reflexive “to be added” in Eluc674.^[10]
• 1192 – viþ sumar leggia “to add to the summer” in the computus text EncCod1812.^[10]
• 1200 – “to risk (one's life)” and “to lay down, prescribe” in the homilies HómÍsl.^[10]
• 1200–1225 – leggr, lagði and lagðr in AM 677 4to.^[15]
• About 1300 – lægiumk (leggjumk) in a runic love verse from Bergen, N B496.^[16]

Meanings

Verb

1. to lay, place, put down;^[11][10] leggja segl to lower the sail.^[11][10]
2. to put (leggja eld í to set fire to); leggja at velli to fell, slay.^[11][10]
3. of animals, to drop young.^[11][6]
4. to lay out, make, build (fences, roads).^[11][17]
5. to appoint, fix (a meeting, games, a battle).^[11]
6. to tax, value.^[11]
7. to thrust, stab (with a spear).^[13][1]
8. to head, steer (a ship) in a direction.^[6]
9. impersonal, of ice or snow: leggr ís ice forms, leggr fjǫrð the fjord freezes over.^[10][12]

Word family

• afleggja
• fyrirleggja
• niðrleggja
• samleggja
• uppleggja
• útleggja
• undirleggja
• eyðileggja

Descendants

• Icelandic leggja^[1]
• Faroese leggja^[1]
• Norn legga^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk leggja^[1]
• Old Swedish læggia^[1]
• Swedish lägga^[1]
• Old Danish læggiæ^[1]
• Danish lægge^[1]
• Norwegian Bokmål legge^[1]

Related words

• liggja
• lag
• lǫg
• lægi
• lega

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 Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. Ög Hov95;34
3. ^ a b c Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 322
4. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 231
5. ^ a b de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 349
6. ^ a b c d e f Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. leggja
7. ^ a b Feist, Sigmund (1939), Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der gotischen Sprache, 3rd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 191
8. ^ Hofmann, Dietrich; Popkema, Anne Tjerk (2008), Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. s.v. ledza
9. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. N KJ101
10. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. leggja
11. ^ a b c d e f g h Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. leggja
12. ^ a b Baetke, Walter (1965–1968), Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, Berlin (digital ed. Greifswald 2006), p. 367
13. ^ a b Falk, Hjalmar; Torp, Alf (1910–1911), Norwegisch-dänisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg, p. s.v. lægge
14. ^ a b Hellquist, Elof (1922), Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Lund, p. s.v. lägga
15. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 677 4to
16. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. N B496
17. ^ Hægstad, Marius; Torp, Alf (1909), Gamalnorsk ordbok med nynorsk tyding, Kristiania: Det norske samlaget, p. 247