rift

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 9/6/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > "Joan H. Hall" <jdhall at WISC.EDU> wrote:
> >
> > DARE's entry for "rift" (which has an Ohio,West Virginia, and two North
> > Carolina examples as well as six from Pennsylvania) refers to OED2,
> > which gives the date a1340 and the comment, "Now Sc. and north. dial."
>
> Wow, Joan!  That beats "ralph" by more than 600 years!

Why stop there? OED gives the Old Norse etymon "rypta" (mentioned
elsethread by Michael Montgomery), which Pokorny in turn derives from
Proto-IE "reub-". (This is apparently related to "reug-", the root for
"reek" and "eruct".)

http://ehl.santafe.edu/cgi-bin/etymology.cgi?single=1&basename=/data/ie/piet&text_number=+956

I wonder if "ralph" might derive from some other cognate -- say,
German "rülpsen".


--Ben Zimmer

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org