LL-L "Etymology" 2004.07.20 (03) [E]

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From: Lone Olesen <istranza at yahoo.dk>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology"

Hello all,

Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net> wrote:

> That is not the only insinuation of S. African
> 'schoolboy language' into
> Tolkien's books. Here is another, from the Hobbit,
> where Bilbo teases the
> spiders in Mirkwood to a frenzy by singing a song
> calling them 'attercop',
> Afrikaans 'etterkop' - (pus-head) . This word was
> identified to his
> correspondants by Tolkien as from Old English
> 'Aetercop' - (poison head);
> suitable for an adder or a spider, but sure'nuff in
> his childhood in
> Bloemfontein, the use of that word would have
> reduced the entire school
> playground to a shocked & echoing silence.

Incidentally, the Danish word for "spider" is
"edderkop", with no name-calling intended. The first
syllable "edder" also means poison and can be used for
swearing or for reinforcing a statement.
Unfortunately, I don't have my ethymological
dictionary at the moment, and looking it up on the web
I only got the children's song "itsy bitsy spider"
(Lille Peter Edderkop).
Rgds, Lone Olesen

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From: Ruth & Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2004.07.19 (02) [E]

Beste Ron,

Subject: Etymology

> I take "to roar" to belong to a different group of apparently
> onomatopoetically derived cognates: Old English _rārian_, Middle Saxon
> _rāren_ ~ _rēren_ > Modern Saxon _raren_ ~ _reren_ (<rahren> ~ <rohren> ~
> <rehren>), Middle Dutch _reeren_, Old German _rērēn_ > Middle German
_rēren_
> > Modern German _röhren_ (of male deer during the rut), apparently related
> to Slavic words like Russian раять _rajat'_ 'to sound (loudly)' and
> Indo-Aryan words such as Sanskrit रायित _rāyati_ '(he/she/it) barks'.

You've got me there! This is what Chambers's Etymological Dictionary says;
"--- to cry as a beast --- [Anglo-Saxon 'rárian', Old German 'reran', --- to
cry as a stag, to bellow; ---]." Here comes my face-saver, "[--- influenced
also by an old verb 'hroren', the German rühren, to move ---."

Groete,
Mark

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