sæti

Forms

sæti n (genitive sætis) (strong ija-stem)^[1] Early spellings include sǽti, ſęti and ſeti in AM 677 4to,^[2] and sæte in Norwegian diplomas such as DN 2:13 of 1266.^[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Proto-Germanic *sētiją (“seat”),^[4][5] a noun with the long vowel of the family of sitja (“to sit”) and sát (“ambush, lying in wait”).^[6][5] Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon takes its first sense to be “a place where one can sit”.^[5]

West Germanic has nouns of the same stem with a prefix: Middle Low German gesāte and Old High German gisāzi (“seat, resting place, dwelling”).^[6][5][7] Outside Germanic de Vries compares Latin sēdēs (“seat”), and the root is Proto-Indo-European *sed- (“to sit”).^[6][8][1]

Earliest recorded meaning

IcePaHC dates its first sæti to 1150, in the Icelandic Homily Book.^[9] Menota's earliest record is the dative plural sǽtum in the Norwegian fragment NRA norr fragm 81 A, dated 1150–1250.^[10] Neither gives the passage, so the sense of these first records is not shown.^[9][10]

Semantic evolution

The basic sense is a seat, a person's place in the hall or at table, as in Snorri's Edda: þá er Allfǫðr sitr í því sæti, þá sér hann of allan heim “when All-father sits in that seat, he sees over the whole world”.^[11][12] From the seat of a ruler it came to mean a throne and an office, and in Christian use the see of a bishop or of the pope, postoligt sæti “the apostolic see”.^[13][14][15] The Gulaþing law uses the pair til sess ok til sætis “to seat and place” of leading a man into a kindred.^[11]

The second sense, a hayrick, is collective: hay that has been stacked, the same as sáta.^[15][11] In Eyrbyggja saga an ox lifts a rick with its horns: hóf upp sætit “lifted up the rick”.^[11]

In skaldic poetry sæti is the base-word of kennings: dægra sæti “the seat of the days” is heaven, and Móins sæti “the serpent's seat” is gold.^[16][17]

Icelandic keeps sæti for a seat, a position and a place,^[5] and Norwegian has sete.^[1] De Vries traces Middle English sete and Scots sait to the Norse word, after Björkman,^[6] and Scottish Gaelic acarsaid “anchorage” goes back to the compound akkerissæti “anchor seat”.^[18]

Timeline

• 1150 – sæti in the Icelandic Homily Book, by IcePaHC's dating.^[9]
• 1150–1250 – sǽtum in the Norwegian fragment NRA norr fragm 81 A.^[10]
• 1200–1225 – sǽti in AM 677 4to.^[2]
• 1266 – sæte in the Norwegian diploma DN 2:13.^[3]
• 1320–1350 – sǽti and sǽtis in the sagas of AM 132 fol (Egils saga, Laxdæla saga, Njáls saga).^[19]

Meanings

Noun

1. a seat, a person's place in the hall or at table.^[20][12]
2. a seat of authority, a throne; an office;^[13][14][15] (Christian) the see of a bishop or of the pope.^[13][14][15]
3. a hayrick, a stack of hay.^[20][11]

Word family

• hásæti
• stórsæti
• sætispallr
• sætisstóll
• akkerissæti

Descendants

• Icelandic sæti^[1]
• Norwegian Bokmål sete^[1]
• Norwegian Nynorsk sete^[1]

Related words

• setja
• sitja
• sæta

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 677 4to
3. ^ a b Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. DN 2:13
4. ^ Köbler, Gerhard, Altnordisches Wörterbuch, online, koeblergerhard.de/wikiling (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary database copy), p. s.v. sæti
5. ^ a b c d e Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. sæti
6. ^ a b c d de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 576
7. ^ Lloyd, Albert L.; Springer, Otto; Lühr, Rosemarie, et al. (1988–), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Althochdeutschen, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; online ewa.saw-leipzig.de, p. IV, col. 386
8. ^ Slocum, Jonathan, ed., Indo-European Lexicon (after Pokorny), Linguistics Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, p. s.v. sæti
9. ^ a b c Wallenberg, Joel C.; Ingason, Anton Karl; Sigurðsson, Einar Freyr; Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur, Icelandic Parsed Historical Corpus, version 0.9
10. ^ a b c Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. NRA norr fragm 81 A
11. ^ a b c d e Fritzner, Johan (1886–1896), Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, 2nd ed., Kristiania, p. s.v. sæti
12. ^ a b 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. sæti
13. ^ a b c Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 619
14. ^ a b c Baetke, Walter (1965–1968), Wörterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, Berlin (digital ed. Greifswald 2006), p. 634
15. ^ a b c d Hægstad, Marius; Torp, Alf (1909), Gamalnorsk ordbok med nynorsk tyding, Kristiania: Det norske samlaget, p. 451
16. ^ Finnur Jónsson (1931), Lexicon Poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, 2nd ed., Copenhagen: S. L. Møller, p. 559
17. ^ Sveinbjörn Egilsson (1860), Lexicon poeticum antiquæ linguæ septentrionalis, Hafniæ: Societas regia antiquariorum septentrionalium, p. 698
18. ^ Cox, Richard A. V. (2024–2026), Old Norse Loan-Words in Scottish Gaelic, Clann Tuirc, richardavcox.scot/ONlwSG, p. s.v. acarsaid
19. ^ Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 132 fol
20. ^ a b Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. sæti