LL-L "Etymology" 2009.01.16 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 16 January 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.01.15 (02) [E]

A related word is "Grütt", "grits": "grain split into coarse pieces" (as
opposed to meal, which is grain split into very tiny pieces).

I used "meal" instead of "flour". False friend to LS/G "Mehl". But as I had
my etymological dictionary beside me, I took a look and found that it's not
at false friend at all. "meal" actually also means "flour" (but
etymologically unrelated to "meal" meaning "food served"). I had no idea. So
a pseudo-false friend. But I wanted to note it, cause I think, "meal"
meaning "flour" is a word not known to most people who are non-native
speakers of English.

Marcus Buck

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From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2009.01.15 (02) [E]

A related word is "Grütt", "grits": "grain split into coarse pieces"

I just had a enlightening moment about this word, that I want to share. In
our Low Saxon the word is "Grütt" (English "grits", German "Grütze"). There
is a special type of sausage that is called "Grützwurst" in German [grits
sausage], but "Göttwust" in Low Saxon. I always wondered about why there is
a difference. "Gött" has no meaning of its own in our dialect (at least not
known to me). I tried to explain it by an earlier form "Grött" that became
"Gört" by metathesis and "Gött" by assimilation of the 'r' (which is common
in our dialect). But there's a problem: The word clearly is "Grütt" and not
"Grött". There are some words which can take both "u" and "o" in different
Low Saxon dialects (like "Wust" vs. "Wost" for sausage), but that's not
really a satisfactory explanation in the case of "Grütt".
Now, looking up "greet" and "great", I saw in my books, that there are three
different words with similar etymologies and/or meanings in English:
"grits", "grit" and "groat". "grits" was originally a plural of a word
"grit" and is thus a perfect etymological match of Low Saxon "Grütt". "grit"
meaning "fine gravel", "sand" was originally "greot" in English and became
"grit" only by assimilation to "grits" (the normal development would have
led to "groot" if I'm not mislead here). The German cognate of this word is
"Grieß", which once was used for sand and gravel too, but now is used for
grain of a granularity more coarse than flour but much less coarse than
groats. In Low Saxon we refer to it by its German name "Grieß", but perhaps
other dialects have retained the old word attested from Middle Low Saxon
("greet"). The third word "groat" means "very coarse grains" and that's
exactly what Göttwust is made of. The older English form of "groat" is
"grot" and is related to an older Low Saxon form "grot" and "gort" by
metathesis. And from "gort" to "Gött" the Low Saxon development is really
obvious. So in "Göttwust" this older word is retained, but the general term
"Gött" was replaced by "Grütt". In German the equivalent of "groat" is
"Graupen" which is of Slavic source (in the form "Grupen" known to some
eastern Low Saxon dialects too). As far as I know there is no direct German
cognate for "groat"/"gort". But there is a related word which again is used
for some kind of gravel:  "Graus" is non-standard German and "Grus" in
standard German. The Form "Grus" is derived from Low Saxon/Dutch and is
ultimately derived from IE *ghrēu + 'so' formant, whereas "gort" is IE
*ghrēu + 'to' formant.
Now I am aware of it, it was easy to find out, that Dutch Low Saxon retained
the old word and still uses "gort", "gört" or "göt" (there's even a Dutch
Low Saxon Wikipedia article: <http://nds-nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillegarste
>).

Marcus Buck

These connections between words for grain and words for sand give
interesting new perspectives on the custom of little children to bake sand
pies in the sandbox.
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