rifa

Forms

rifa f (genitive rifu)^[1]

Etymology

It is a native word, related to the strong verb rífa (“to tear, rend”): Torp places both under Proto-Germanic *rīban (“to tear”), and Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon refers the noun to rif and the verb.^[2][3][4] De Vries lists it among the relatives of the verb, whose cognates include Old Frisian rīva (“to tear”), Middle Low German rīven and Old High German rīban (“to rub”), and, beyond Germanic, Ancient Greek ἐρείπω (ereípō, “I throw down”) and Latin rīpa (“bank”).^[4] Jóhannesson puts it under Proto-Indo-European *rei- (“to scratch, tear”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

ONP's earliest dated citation is from the Norwegian Konungs skuggsjá, in its manuscript of 1275, on the glaciers of Greenland: Uærða munu oc hvartvæggia storar rivvr a þeim iaclum er á lanndeno liggia “there will also be great crevasses in the glaciers that lie on the land”.^[6] Menota dates the manuscript, AM 243 bα fol, to 1270–1280.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The word means a long, narrow opening: a crevasse in ice, a cleft in the earth or rock, a chink in a wall through which one can look, and the open gashes of wounds.^[6][8] Compounds such as bergrifa, bjargrifa and jarðrifa name clefts in rock and earth.^[6][1] Cleasby and Vigfússon note it as frequent in modern Icelandic.^[1]

It survives as Icelandic rifa, Faroese riva, Nynorsk rive and Swedish reva.^[3] Cox derives the Lewis village name An Riobh, with Scottish Gaelic riobh, from it, after the cleft at the north end of the settlement.^[9]

Timeline

• 1275 – rivvr “crevasses” in Konungs skuggsjá.^[6]
• 1300 – af rifum saranna “from the gashes of the wounds” in the text ONP cites as Thom¹.^[6]
• 1340 – eina rifv a vegginvm “a chink in the wall” in the text ONP cites as Ant.^[6]
• 1370 – iardrifu “a cleft in the earth”.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. a rift, crack, fissure or chink.^[6][10][1]

Word family

• bergrifa
• bjargrifa
• jarðrifa
• hamarrifa

Descendants

• Icelandic rifa^[3]
• Faroese riva^[3]
• Norwegian Nynorsk rive^[3]
• Swedish reva^[3]

Related words

• rífa
• rifna
• rif

Usage notes

Two weak verbs are also spelled rifa: one meaning “to sew loosely together”, used of sewing a corpse into a hide and of Loki's lips in Snorri's Edda, and one meaning “to reef (a sail)”, made from rif “reef”.^{[4][11][6][3]}

References

1. ^ a b c d Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 497
2. ^ Torp, Alf (1909), Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit (Fick, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 4th ed., vol. 3), Göttingen, p. 344
3. ^ a b c d e f g Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. rifa
4. ^ a b c de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 445
5. ^ Jóhannesson, Alexander (1956), Isländisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bern, p. 699
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog / A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose, Copenhagen, onp.ku.dk (CC BY-SA 4.0), p. s.v. rifa
7. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 243 bα fol
8. ^ Fritzner, Johan (1886–1896), Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, 2nd ed., Kristiania, p. s.v. rifa
9. ^ Cox, Richard A. V. (2024–2026), Old Norse Loan-Words in Scottish Gaelic, Clann Tuirc, richardavcox.scot/ONlwSG, p. s.v. riobh
10. ^ Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. rifa
11. ^ Köbler, Gerhard, Altnordisches Wörterbuch, online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary database copy), p. s.v. rifa