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spraka

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Etymology and origin of the Old Norse word spraka

Confidence
Probable
First attested
1200–1225 AM 677 4to More words from the 12th century

Forms

spraka v (past sprakaði)[1][2]

Etymology

It is a weak verb of a Germanic group of words for crackling and sparks, beside Old English spearca (“spark”), Middle Low German sparken (“to sparkle”) and spranken.[3][4] Outside Germanic it is compared with Lithuanian spragė́ti (“to crackle”).[4][3] Pokorny and Torp place it under an extended root Proto-Indo-European *sp(h)erag-.[3][5]

De Vries and Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon think the West Germanic verb “to speak”, Old English sprecan and Old High German sprehhan, probably belongs here too, the stem having first meant crackling and bursting noises.[3][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Menota's one record is in the manuscript AM 677 4to of 1200–1225.[6] Fritzner quotes the Old Norse version of Gregory's Dialogues: þá tók brauðit at spraka sem steinn mikill í eldinum “then the bread began to crackle like a great stone in the fire”, for Latin crepitum panis dedit.[7][1]

Semantic evolution

The verb is used of things crackling in fire: another passage says that in it malmr rennr saman ok steinar spraka, en tré loga “metal melts, stones crackle and wood burns”.[7][8] It lives on in Icelandic, in Norwegian and Swedish spraka, and in Danish sprage.[4][3]

Timeline

  • 1200–1225 – spraka in the manuscript AM 677 4to.[6]

Meanings

Verb

  1. to crackle, to crack in fire.[2][7][3]

Word family

  • spraki

Descendants

  • Icelandic spraka[4]
  • Norwegian Nynorsk spraka[4]
  • Swedish spraka[3]
  • Danish sprage[3]
  • spark
  • sprek
  • sprǫkla

Usage notes

Icelandic has two later words of the same form: spraka “to wriggle”, recorded from about 1500, and the feminine noun spraka “small halibut, flounder”, from the 17th century.[4][1]

References

  1. ^ a b c Cleasby, Richard; Vigfússon, Guðbrandur (1874), An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 584
  2. ^ a b Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. s.v. spraka
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h de Vries, Jan (1977), Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, p. 537
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Ásgeir Blöndal Magnússon (1989), Íslensk orðsifjabók, Reykjavík: Orðabók Háskólans, ordsifjabok.arnastofnun.is, p. s.v. spraka
  5. ^ Torp, Alf (1909), Wortschatz der germanischen Spracheinheit (Fick, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der indogermanischen Sprachen, 4th ed., vol. 3), Göttingen, p. 515
  6. ^ a b Menota: Medieval Nordic Text Archive, menota.org (texts by shelfmark; CC BY-SA 4.0), p. AM 677 4to
  7. ^ a b c Fritzner, Johan (1886–1896), Ordbog over det gamle norske Sprog, 2nd ed., Kristiania, p. s.v. spraka
  8. ^ Hægstad, Marius; Torp, Alf (1909), Gamalnorsk ordbok med nynorsk tyding, Kristiania: Det norske samlaget, p. 422
Cite this entry

“Spraka.” Etymologically, 14 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/non/spraka. Accessed 14 Nov. 2026.

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