LL-L: "Etymology" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 11.AUG.1999 (01)

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "Etymology" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 10.AUG.1999 (01)

> From: Muhammed Suleiman [suleiman at lineone.net]
> Subject: LL-L: "Etymology" [E] LOWLANDS-L, 09.AUG.1999 (03)
>
>             I think a connection between the two is unlikely, both on
> phonological and morphological grounds. The primary meaning of the word
> glaum/glom is 'to snatch at', or 'to make threatening gestures' [ The New
> Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, where, incidentally, it is not
> marked as
> being limited to Scots.] or 'to steal or grab' [ibid., marked as
> colloquial,
> chiefly US]. Curiously, the earliest occurrence of glaum it records is
> during the period 1770-1799, so it may have originally been current in
> Scotland.

"Gloum" is from Old Scots, meaning "to frown" or "to scowl". This took the
meaning of "to darken", hence Scots "gloam" (to grow dark), "gloamin"
(evening twilight) and presumably also English "glum" and "gloom".

In the north of Scotland, the meaning has also become connected with the
idea of frowning because of a sudden suspicion, hence the entry in
Jakobsen's "Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland" (his
preferred spelling is "glum" although he records "glom" as well):

"to look or be suspicious; to suspect; "to glum upon a ting": to have a
suspicion of something not being quite right, that there is something
wanting; "I glumd as muckle": I thought as much.

Hence the modern American meaning of catching on to something.

Note that Jakobsen's dictionary isn't really a Norn dictionary: it's just a
dictionary of words that Jakobsen found in Shetlandic which struck him as
being of Scandinavian origin (he himself was Faroese). He compares it with
Norse "gluma", to scowl, but of course the word existed in Old Scots so
can't be said with certainty to be a Norn word, though presumably it did get
into Old Scots from Norse.

Sandy Fleming
http:\\www.fleimin.demon.co.uk

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