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Germanic Lexicon Project
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Author: Curt
Date: 2005-04-03 11:53:41
Subject: Re: How is Gothic 'weihs' pronounced?
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> > The long consonant in <i>wiccian</i> is not hard to explain. In West Germanic, all consonants except *r become geminated before *j. So we can imagine a Pre-Proto-West-Germanic verb *wikjana which would change to *wikkjan in Proto-West-Germanic; this would come out as <i>wiccian</i> in Old English by the regular sound changes. The verb looks like one of a very common class of verbs in Germanic which form their present tense with the suffix *-ja- (PIE *-ye/yo-).
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> Sean & Curt,
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> Gemination: true, with the proviso that this change only takes place after a short vowel. But wouldn't OE wiccian be a Class 2 weak verb, from *wikkojana, rather than Class 1 *wik(k)jana? The later ought to give give OE wiccan (cf. bycgan, etc). Still, if it was originally a Class 1 weak verb, I suppose it might have changed conjugation by analogy with other Class 2 verbs with the meaning "to perform the role/office/function of..., to act as..."
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> Just a guess, but if it wasn't for those pesky Low German forms (wikken, wicken), it would be tempting to imagine a derivation from *witjan > wicce (cf. *kraft(i)ja > cræfca "workman"; *gefetjan > gefeccan > MnE fetch; ort geard > orceard > MnE orchard; see Campbell's OE grammar, para. 434, whence these examples). This would suggest a meaning like "wise woman". I'm pretty ignorant about the history of Low German, Old Saxon, as yet, so I don't know if wikken can be explained by regular sound changes there--but the English process depends on palatalisation, which wouldn't apply in Low German, as far as I know. Or could wikken be a loan from English or Frisian?
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> There is an OE word wítga, wítega "prophet, wiseman" (long root vowel). Thinking purely of OE sound changes, OE wicce
> Here are some more ideas:
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> http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=witch>
> (But the derivation of wicca can't be derived directly from *wikkjaz, as it's a different declension--which doesn't rule out it being the same root.)
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> I've seen wíce related to wícgerefa, a kind of official. There is an OE word wíc "village, town, dwelling", which survives in placenames as -wich and -wick. The OED says "apparently from L. vícus "row of houses, quarter of a city, street, village". The root of the Latin word may be cognate with Gothic weihs "village"--that is, they could both be descended from the same Indo-European root, as shown by the regular correspondance of Gothic/Germanic to Latin . This shows one way in which apparent exceptions to the regular sound changes can occur: namely borrowing. Others include the alteration of the spoken or written form of a word to suit a supposed etymology, e.g. the unpronounced -s- in Modern English "island", due to an erroneous association with French isle. I assume it's the chance similarity in sound that led to the popular association of wicken trees with witchcraft. But till we're sure of the real etymology of "witch", who knows...
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> Good thing sound changes aren't random though: that really would be confusing.
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> Peter