lemja

Forms

lemja (singular past indicative lamdi, plural past indicative lǫmdu, past participle lamdr or lamiðr) (weak class 1 (short stem))^[1] Old Danish runic lækæþe, read lamdi “lamed”, on the medieval Svendborg inscription DR 186.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *lamjaną (“to break, lame”),^[3][1][4] a causative verb made to the adjective Proto-Germanic *lamaz (“lame”), which gave lami.^[3][5] The same verb is Old English lemian, Old Frisian lemma and Old High German lemmen, meaning “to lame, cripple”.^[3][4]

Outside Germanic it is compared with Proto-Slavic *lomiti (“to break”) and Old Prussian limtwei (“to break”);^[3][6][7] Köbler places them under Proto-Indo-European *lem- (“to break”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The earliest dated record is in the Elucidarius manuscript AM 674 a 4to, which ONP dates to about 1175, where the participle means “crippled”: sva ero hiner lamþer miklo ómagne “so are those crippled with great weakness”.^[8] In the Icelandic Homily Book of about 1200 it is said of the fiends who tormented Job: þeir lǫmþo hann meþ lícþro “they struck him with leprosy”.^[8]

Semantic evolution

Cleasby and Vigfússon define the verb as beating so as to lame or disable, and its uses run from “to thrash, beat” to “to smash, break” and “to hinder”.^[9][10] In the laws it means to hinder, as of stopping a voyage by taking the sail away.^[10][11] In the Edda it means to smash to pieces: lemþa alla í liþo “would smash her all to pieces”.^[12] ONP's genre table shows it chiefly in religious writing.^[8]

Modern Icelandic lemja is the ordinary word for “to beat, thrash”.^[13][7]

Timeline

• 1175 – the participle lamþer “crippled” in the Elucidarius, AM 674 a 4to.^[8]
• 1200 – lǫmþo “struck” in the Icelandic Homily Book.^[8]
• 1200–1225 – lamðisk, lamiðr in AM 677 4to and læmr in AM 619 4to.^[14][15]

Meanings

Verb

1. to thrash, flog, beat.^[16][9]
2. to lame, disable; to smash, break.^[17][18]
3. (law) to hinder, prevent.^[10][11]
4. lemja niðr, to beat down, suppress.^[16]
5. (reflexive, lemjask) to be broken or badly injured.^[16][17]

Word family

• lemstr

Descendants

• Icelandic lemja^[1]
• Faroese lemja^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk lemja^[1]
• Old Danish læmiæ^[1]
• Danish læmme^[1]

Related words

• lami

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. DR 186
3. ^ a b c d Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 234
4. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2014), Germanisches Wörterbuch, 5th ed., online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling
5. ^ de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 352
6. ^ Torp, Alf (1909), Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit (Fick, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 4th ed., vol. 3), Göttingen, p. 363
7. ^ a b Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. lemja
8. ^ a b c d e Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. lemja
9. ^ a b Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 383
10. ^ a b c Fritzner, Johan (1886–1896), Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, 2nd ed., Kristiania, p. s.v. lemja
11. ^ a b A Lexicon of Medieval Nordic Law, Digital Humanities Institute, University of Sheffield, p. s.v. lemja
12. ^ Gering, Hugo (1903), Vollständiges Wörterbuch zu den Liedern der Edda, Halle: Waisenhaus, p. col. 613
13. ^ Sigfús Blöndal (1920–1924), Islandsk-dansk ordbog, Reykjavík, p. 489
14. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 677 4to
15. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 619 4to
16. ^ a b c Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. lemja
17. ^ a b Baetke, Walter (1965–1968), Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, Berlin (digital ed. Greifswald 2006), p. 375
18. ^ Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 368