plógr

Forms

plógr m^[1]

Etymology

In Wiktionary's and Kroonen's account it is inherited from Proto-Germanic *plōgaz (“plough”), a noun shared with Old English plōh, Old Frisian plōch, Middle Dutch ploech and Old High German pfluog.^[1][2]

The older Norse word for the plough was arðr, and most of the Norse sources hold that the newer word came from outside.^[3][4] Cleasby and Vigfússon called it borrowed, noting that Gothic used 𐌷𐍉𐌷𐌰 (hōha) and Old English sulh for the plough.^[5] Fritzner thought it probably foreign and the name of an implement different from the ard.^[6] Fischer lists it among the prehistoric loanwords of Old Norse, as a cultural word of unknown origin beside the Old English and Middle Low German words.^[7] For de Vries it reached Scandinavia late and may be young in England and in Frankish territory too; following Trier, he suggests it arose west of the Elbe as the name of an improved wheeled plough.^[3] Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon likewise thinks it most probably came to the North from Germany, perhaps for another kind of plough than the ard.^[4]

Its deeper origin is disputed.^[2][8] On one view it is a Germanic formation: Trier, followed by de Vries, takes it as the lengthened grade of the root of Old Frisian plegia, Old Saxon plegan and Old High German pflegan (“to look after, practise”).^[3] Kroonen notes that a derivation from Proto-Germanic *plehaną needs a shift of sense from “to be used to” through “to live” to “to plough”, though the opposite path from “plough” to “livelihood” is possible as well, and he offers as an alternative a derivative of the word for “sod”.^[2] Torp thought it was first a wooden wedge, related to Norwegian plugg (“peg”).^[9][4]

On the other view it is a cultural loan from outside Germanic: Jóhannesson suggested the language of the Raetians, who according to Pliny invented the wheeled plough,^[10] and Falk and Torp set Pliny's obscure Latin plaumorati beside the Lombardic word.^[11] Meringer explained Pliny's word as a compound “plough-wagon”, which Trier rejected.^[3] Stender-Petersen proposed a Gothic borrowing from Celtic, which de Vries rules out because of the initial ⟨p⟩,^[3] while Wiktionary mentions a loan from Proto-Celtic *ɸlowyos (“rudder”).^[1] Others connect it with a Latin word for a cart-box, which Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon thinks doubtful.^[4] Hellquist calls it still obscure, but surely the name of a less primitive tool than the ard, perhaps taken from the people that invented it.^[8]

The laws of the Lombards have Lombardic plōvum.^[4][3] Kroonen takes this as the Germanic noun borrowed into Vulgar Latin, and the Germanic word also became the source of Lithuanian plū̃gas and of the Slavic word for the plough.^[2][4][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Rundata reads the runic bluka on a stick from Staraja Ladoga, which it dates to about 800, as the genitive plural plóga, in a verse that ends fimbul-sinni plóga “a mighty company of ploughs”.^[12] In manuscripts the word is first dated in AM 619 4to of 1200–1225 (plog).^[13] Among the Eddic poems it occurs in Rígsþula, where Karl learns keyra plóg “to drive the plough”.^[14][15]

Semantic evolution

In prose the plough appears in the laws, as in the Norwegian Landslǫg: ef maðr hǫggr øyk firir plógi eða arðri “if a man strikes a draught animal in front of a plough or an ard”.^[16] In the Prose Edda Gefjon yokes four oxen to a plough that cuts so hard and deep that it tears land away,^[6] and in Egils saga a shilling of silver is levied on every plough.^[6][5]

From the plough the word passed to what ploughing yields: crop, gain, profit, as in veraldar plógr “worldly gain”.^[5][17][18] Fischer took the sense “gain” from plōch “acquisition”,^[19] while Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon compares arðr, which went the same way from “plough” to “profit”.^[4] Konungs skuggsjá says of unruly men that when suspicion and quarrels arise bæra þeir þa ut ploga sina “they bring out their ploughs”, that is, they set to work for what they can get.^[16][6]

Modern Icelandic plógur is also a dredge for shellfish and a snowplough.^[4] The MED derives English plough both from Old Norse directly and through late Old English plōg, plōh, itself a Norse loan, and notes that as a name element it is most frequent in the Danelaw.^[20] Falk and Torp think the English word may have its sense from Norse.^[11]

Timeline

• c. 800 – bluka, read as plóga, on a runic stick from Staraja Ladoga.^[12]
• 1200–1225 – plog in AM 619 4to.^[13]
• 1270–1280 – ploga in AM 243 bα fol;^[21] ONP dates its Konungs skuggsjá citation to 1275.^[16]
• 1276–1300 – plógi, plógs and plógr in the law manuscript Holm perg 34 4to.^[22]
• 1320–1350 – plógi in Egils saga in AM 132 fol.^[23]
• 1325 – Gefjon's plough in Snorra Edda.^[16]
• 1424 – harf oc ploogh “harrow and plough” in a letter from Tunsberg county.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. a plough.^[16][24][5]
2. crop, yield; gain, profit.^[16][5][17]
3. bera út plóga sína: to set to work to grab what one can.^[16][6]

Word family

• plægja
• plógsland
• féplógr
• jarðplógr
• sáðplógr
• veraldarplógr
• penningaplógr

Descendants

• Icelandic plógur^[1]
• Faroese plógv^[1]
• Norn plu^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk plog^[1]
• Norwegian Bokmål plog^[1]
• Swedish plog^[1]
• Danish plov^[1]
• Middle English plouh^[1][20]
• English plough^[20]

Usage notes

Cleasby and Vigfússon note Plógr as a Danish man's name in Knýtlinga saga.^[5]

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 d Kroonen, Guus (2013), Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 11, Leiden / Boston: Brill, p. 398
3. ^ a b c d e f de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 426
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. plógur
5. ^ a b c d e f Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 477
6. ^ a b c d e f Fritzner, Johan (1886–1896), Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, 2nd ed., Kristiania, p. s.v. plógr
7. ^ Fischer, Frank (1909), Die Lehnwörter des Altwestnordischen, Palaestra 85, Berlin, p. 12
8. ^ a b Hellquist, Elof (1922), Svensk etymologisk ordbok, Lund, p. s.v. plog
9. ^ Torp, Alf (1909), Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit (Fick, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 4th ed., vol. 3), Göttingen, p. 221
10. ^ Jóhannesson, Alexander (1956), Isländisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern, p. 1119
11. ^ a b c Falk, Hjalmar; Torp, Alf (1910–1911), Norwegisch-dänisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Heidelberg, p. s.v. plog
12. ^ a b Samnordisk runtextdatabas (Rundata 3.1), Uppsala universitet (inscriptions by signum), p. RU NLT2004;5
13. ^ a b Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 619 4to
14. ^ Gering, Hugo (1903), Vollständiges Wörterbuch zu den Liedern der Edda, Halle: Waisenhaus, p. col. 812
15. ^ Fischer, Frank (1909), Die Lehnwörter des Altwestnordischen, Palaestra 85, Berlin, p. 187
16. ^ a b c d e f g Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. plógr
17. ^ a b Hægstad, Marius; Torp, Alf (1909), Gamalnorsk ordbok med nynorsk tyding, Kristiania: Det norske samlaget, p. 331
18. ^ Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 452
19. ^ Fischer, Frank (1909), Die Lehnwörter des Altwestnordischen, Palaestra 85, Berlin, p. 1
20. ^ 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)
21. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 243 bα fol
22. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. Holm perg 34 4to
23. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 132 fol
24. ^ Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. plógr