Talk:List of English words of Old Norse origin

message: All spellings of Old Norse words are as according to my references; other references might have different spellings. James 007 05:04, 19 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spellings 

message: This one is a real problem to isolate away from 'be' in the reference texts I have convieniently available here. The O.E.D. is annoyingly vague in tracing it. Skeat's Dictionary has some good data, but nothing that can be easily boiled down to what is apparently wanted to accompany the O.N. portions of the entries for this list. Björkman's work on borrowings into Middle English might have something, but I cannot find it right now (seems like it should, though). I am going to avoid doing anything with this word at the moment.
-P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 01:37, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  'are' 

message: Is the list supposed to include English words that are cognate with Old Norse? I figure the answer is 'no', but wanted to ask in order to be certain. It would make the list much longer, which would probably be a bad idea, and the list *does* say "of Old Norse origin", so I think this may be a foolish question. :) As an example of what I mean:
Proposed entry:
;arrow:
* ör, plural örvar ("=an arrow") {possible cognate}
* English provenance = c835 CE (as arwan, an early form of the word)
From the O.E.D.:
[OE. had two cognate forms, earh for arh:{em}OTeut. arhwo- neuter, and arwe for arhwe:{em}*arhwôn weak fem.; akin to ON. ör, örvar:{em}*arhwâ str. fem., and Goth. arhwazna from arhw (cf. hlaiwasna ‘grave,’ from hlaiw); prob. ‘the thing belonging to the bow,’ arhw being cognate with L. arqu-us, arc-us, bow. (Cf. OHG. fingiri:{em}*fingrio- the thing belonging to the finger, ring, f. fingar.) A rare word in OE. the ordinary terms being str{aeacu}l, and flá, flán, of which the former disappeared after 1200, the latter occurred in Scotch after 1500. But arrow was the ordinary prose word after 1000.]
(/end O.E.D. quote)
P.MacUidhir (t) (c) 02:29, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There seems to be quite many words that are mergers of Old English and Old Norse forms, making the exact origin hard to trace. 惑乱 分からん 14:33, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

text: No, vigor is from Old French, most Norse nouns ending in -r lack an -r in modern English. 惑乱 分からん 18:30, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  'arrow' 

message: According to SOED, this was reborrowed into modern English from modern Danish, not Old Norse. (Wiktionary has it as a straight descent from OE run, which I think is incorrect.)
I've taken it out for now. Mentioning it here because I forgot to mention it in the edit summary. — Haeleth Talk 08:56, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rune? 

message: I can't quite remember correctly, but I think the English "alive" comes from the ON "á lif". Someone who knows what he's doing should add that. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.36.68.189 (talk) 21:23, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  "alive" 

message: *Dale = Valley,  its very common for the word Dale to be used in place of Valley in Yorkshire and Derbyshire.
*Gate = street
*By = town i.e. Derby, Grimsby 
*Fell = Hill, again its use is very common in North of England.  
These are common in old Danelaw areas of the east Midlands and north of England.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Willhdavison (talk • contribs) 21:55, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "Dale" is actually from Old English, although Norse influence preserved it, "gate" meaning street or manner of acting  seems extremely archaic or dialectal but alright, "by" doesn't seem to ever be used meaning village or town by itself, and "fell", just as "gate" seems to be quite archaic/dialectal. Anyway, I have my doubts about "dale" and "by", but "gate" and "fell" could be added, rare as they might be. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 01:31, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

text: "Dalen" is in definite tense, "the valley". "Valley" is "dal". Apparently the word was in Old English, although Norse influence prevented it from extinction: <BR>My doubts about "by" is that I don't see it as a word in itself, it's just an archaic "suffix" used in placenames. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 15:26, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

text: Source? "Daughter from O.E. dohtor, from P.Gmc. *dochter." Hayden120 (talk) 11:43, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

text: Indented line
*Ta = I have always said "Ta" as you would say "Thank You", or Thanks, It was not till I worked in Sweden that everybody said "Tack" to me for thank you, and it was second nature to say "Ta" to everybody for thanks, and nobody was any the wiser. I grew up in South Wales, near Llanelli/Swansea, I am not sure how common "Ta" as a thank you is in other parts of the UK? its definitely not Welsh as that is "Diolch", So I am convinced it must be a very old Viking word, I know the vikings named Swansea, so maybe this is a language remnant of their presence.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sgdavies (talk • contribs) 12:23, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  A lot of Norse words are missing here unless I am mistaken 

message: I have edited the Ragnarök entry to correct some mistaken translations (namely "Twilight of the Gods", which is not the translation), but I wonder if Ragnarök even belongs on this list since it is not an ON-derived word, but a word which is used only in reference to the mythological event in Norse mythology for which we have no English equivalent word.
136.242.107.85 (talk) 00:26, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ragnarǫk 

message: We owe alot as English people to our northern brethren in both culture and genealogy86.144.66.152 (talk) 21:20, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: wasn't there a genetic study in the last few years that showed that English people have plenty of Celt in them, with the Angles and the Saxons not providing as many German genes as was previously thought, and the Vikings even less? yes I know, sources, sources... 68.174.97.122 (talk) 18:33, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  This is amazing  

message: I removed a large chunk from the intro because:
*it seemed to be simply an alternative minority-view intro
*it's based on a single source which seems to be POV and way out there (the site even doubts the Anglo-Saxon origin of the English language)
*it's unwikified and unencylopedic (e.g., asking questions, saying that "X is difficult, and would require Y, therefore not X, etc.)
Anyway, I don't think there's anything salvageable from this removed text, but for the sake of posterity and fairness, I'll post it here.
::However, there are problems with assuming these words were brought via Vikings. Firstly, Anglo-Saxon England already had huge connections with Scandinavia even before the Vikings as attested to the Beowulf and Sutton Hoo. Secondly many words such as through, skin, egg are basic words which Old English had words for; many Old English basic words were not replaced, so why were some basic words replaced and not others? Also words such as 'they' are pronouns which are very difficult to change as they are the basis of any language. Such changes would require the total replacement of the locals, however in England there is simply no evidence of this and Viking armies are estimated by many historians to be much smaller. 90% of all place names in England are Old English and most Viking place names have been found to have pre-existing settlements underneath, suggesting either that name was already present or is simply a renaming. Also many words are found in the West Midlands, which was not conquered by Vikings but found in local dialects such as Blunder, Kid and Gawk. There is evidence by both Oppenheimer and others that the North and East of England already spoke a Scandinavian-type version of Old English or certainly a related North Germanic version of Germanic languages. www.proto-english.org 
Ufwuct (talk) 16:16, 16 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed POV fork intro 

message: seems to be two issues here, the "a" part, and the "loft" part. the a- prefix, does that come from Norse or was it already in English? (see also on this page alive, and i didn't even check for others) does "a-" separated move the word that should be listed to "loft", and then we also have to explain the words "loft/lift" vis a vis German "luft". Any reason to think any of this is Norse into English, or just everybody is Germanic? 68.174.97.122 (talk) 18:29, 11 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  aloft 

message: The entry on "bug" derives it from "búkr" and glosses it as "insect within tree trunks". However, "búkr" means "belly, abdomen" so the semantic connection here is unclear to say the least. Worse, the linked page on the online etymology dictionary does not support the claim but rather points to Celtic sources. (I've only been able to go back to 2017 with the wayback machine, and the link is dated 2010 so things could have been different.) Incidentally "bock" (he-goat) is used in Swedish to refer to certain wood-boring insects (husbock - house borer) but here the explanation given by svenska.se is an analogy between the antennae and the goat's horns.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.224.188.19 (talk) 14:58, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  bug 

message: Many words are not exclusively North Germanic, e.g.
words that you find in German (and this only a selection):
band, birth, both, crawl (= "krabbeln"), eider, gan (German: Gang), gift, girth, give, guest, hail, how, knife (special tool: Kneip), knot, lathe, loan, loose, plough, reindeer, rib...
And so on
In other words: This list is higly misleading! 84.58.204.55 (talk) 14:32, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Many of these words are not exclusively North Germanic, but also exist in e.g. German (West Germanic), like "wing" (German: "Schwinge"), band)... 

message: My understanding is that "hustings" referring to loci of electioneering is of Icelandic origin. House thing?  Thing in this context appears in Althing, the Icelandic parliament that has many appearances in the Icelandic sagas.  But I'm not expert enough in any of this to add it to the article. Larry Koenigsberg (talk) 06:33, 14 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hustings 

message: one source???  really?  
this is ridiculous.   a mis-take comes from 'mistaka' ?  really? 
how reliable is this page? Stjohn1970 (talk) 02:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Online Etymology???