nór

Forms

nór m (genitive nós, dative nói)^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *nōwaz (“ship”),^[2][3] a word kept only in Norse, where de Vries gives the Proto-Norse form as *nōwa.^[4] Old English had the agent noun Old English nōwend (“skipper, sailor”).^[5][4]

It belongs to the Indo-European word for “ship”, Latin nāvis, Ancient Greek ναῦς (naûs), Sanskrit नौ (naú) and Old Irish nau.^[4][2][6] Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon compares Norwegian Nynorsk no (“trough”), a dialectal Swedish word for a trough hollowed from a tree trunk, and perhaps Norwegian Nynorsk nøle (“trough, hollow vessel”);^[3] Faulkes, after Falk, takes the original sense to be a hollowed tree trunk.^[7] De Vries reports two other explanations of the Scandinavian trough words, Meringer's from núa (“to rub”) and Persson's from a root “to flow”, and finds neither convincing.^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The poetic word has no dated record of its own in the sources held: it is cited from the þulur, the lists of poetic names,^[8][1] and in the compound brandnór “ship of the hearth”, a house, from the Ynglingatal.^[9][10] The only record ONP dates is from about 1500, where the manuscript AM 429 12° reads no mikinn “a large trough” for ker mikit “a large vessel” in the other copies: Sidan let hann setia hana i … ok hella yfir hana wellanda biki “then he had her put in [a large trough] and boiling pitch poured over her”.^[11]

Semantic evolution

In the old language nór is a poetic word for a ship, found in the þulur and in the compound brandnór.^[8][12] Cleasby and Vigfússon add the sense “a smith's trough” from Björn Halldórsson's dictionary,^[1] and the word survives as Icelandic nór for the trough in which a smith quenches iron, beside nótrog.^[3][4]

Timeline

• 1500 – no “trough”, a variant reading in AM 429 12°.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. (poetic) a ship, boat.^[8][7]
2. a trough, the water trough of a smithy.^[11][1]

Word family

• brandnór

Descendants

• Icelandic nór^[3]

Related words

• naust

Usage notes

The word is in the name Nóatún, the home of the god Njǫrðr in the Snorra Edda, dated by ONP in a manuscript of 1325.^[7][13] A neuter nór “narrow inlet, sound” is a separate word, related to njǫrva and nári;^[3][4] Cleasby and Vigfússon knew it only from Danish place-names,^[1] and a Swedish runestone of the Viking Age has it in Silu nór “the sound of Sila”.^[14]

References

1. ^ a b c d e Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 458
2. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 289
3. ^ a b c d e Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. nór
4. ^ a b c d e f de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 411
5. ^ Holthausen, Ferdinand (1934), Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, p. 238
6. ^ Pokorny, Julius (1959), Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern; Munich: Francke, p. 755
7. ^ a b c 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. nór
8. ^ a b c Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 430
9. ^ Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 59
10. ^ Sveinbjörn Egilsson (1860), Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, Hafniæ: Societas regia antiquariorum septentrionalium, p. 74
11. ^ a b c Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. nór
12. ^ Hægstad, Marius; Torp, Alf (1909), Gamalnorsk ordbok med nynorsk tyding, Kristiania: Det norske samlaget, p. 312
13. ^ Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. nóatún
14. ^ Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. U 518