LL-L "Etymology" 2007.05.23 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

L O W L A N D S - L  -  23 May 2007 - Volume 02

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From: Jonny Meibohm <altkehdinger at freenet.de>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2007.05.22 (03) [E/German]

Beste Ron,

if it's not too boring for you let's go on for one more time with our
'letterey' (could be a good synonyme for 'etymology' ;-)).

You wrote:

> "Letter" was a very well established word, no longer perceived as foreign,
by the Middle Saxon stage. I hardly think people would have
> confused *lotterye with letterye.

>  Even if letter wasn't part of the original name for this in Saxon, the
practice could have been renamed by that time.
A French loanword as godfather for a heathen LS custom?
If it is derived from Latin 'lit[t]era' I think it should have
been germanized as 'litterey' or even 'lytterey'. Just if it came from
French it could have been 'letterey' (see below).

According to the *English Wiktionary* and *Harper* (see links below) the
word 'letter' came into Middle English after A.D. 1066 by French influence.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/letter

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=letter&searchmode=none

And *GRIMM *says:

  *LETTER*, *f.* *buchstabe, aus dem franz. lettre übernommen. das spätere
mhd. braucht die form* litter, *nach dem lat.* littera: *littera* *l**ytter*
*D**IEF.* 334a;

( http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher/dwb<http://germazope.uni-trier.de/Projects/WBB/woerterbuecher/dwb>
 )

I don't think that it came earlier into Middle Low Saxon on the continent,
but possibly some monks or other authorities being familiar with writing and
reading *could* have used it before to denote any heathen 'Scrabble' ;:-),
and insofar I have to agree with you.

But this implies that there had been a Germanic word before, doesn't it?
Because we are d'accord that this custom per se must have been of
pre-christianic origin.

If you take another look at the original text you'll find that the author
avoids using any Latin word, and I think *that* was the (Lutheranian)
idea behind the whole text- to get away from the 'mysterious' Latin of the
Catholic Church which people couldn't understand and preach or teach in the
language of the natives.


*Dat erste ghebot*

Dat ys dat erste unses heren ghebot,
Hebbe leef unde anbede eynen god;
Lat ungheloue unde wykerye,
Unde letterye unde touerie.
Do allen luden also
Du welt dat men dy do.
Wat du auer leuer heuest dan god,
Da is dyn afgod,
Da sy brut, wyf,
Edder kynt, de werlt gud, ere edder lyff.

So- why didn't the author use the original Germanic word in this special
case???

As so often in etymologicals- we don't know the answer and perhaps never
will...

Allerbest!

Jonny Meibohm

(BTW: I like the word very much and shall try to 're-animate' it: 'Wat is
dat denn weller foyr 'n doysige Letterey hier?!' ;-)

----------

From: R. F. Hahn < sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Etymology

I understand your trepidation, Jonny.

But we are talking Middle Saxon here, 16th century.  Even ancient practices
can be renamed, especially if they are deemed evil by the Latin-centered
clergy.  Think of English "to divine," "divination," "to tell fortunes"
etc.  All these practices go back to pre-Christian times but ended up being
called by Latinate names even by the common people.

Old Norse already has letr for 'letter', 'writing', etc.

But what if the "letter" we are talking about isn't even involved here?
Perhaps it's another root word, the verb *let- whose performer is a *letter,
and this *letter practises *lettery.

Now -- hold on to your socks! -- Middle German has letzelen, which is
described as ein verbotenes Spiel ("a prohibited game") by W.E.Gonzenbach in
Mittheilungen zur vaterländischen Geschichte 2 (1863). (It appears for
instance in the St.Galler Stadtbuch and has also been mentioned in
St.Gallische Handschriften of 1859.)

The stem of letzelen would be letz-(e)l- in which the -l- part is the
frequentive or iterative (with a diminutive touch) denoting repeated "small"
actions (as for instance in Low Saxon warkeln 'to tinker' vs warken 'to work
(with one's hands)', or German tropfen 'to drip' vs tröpfeln 'to drip', 'to
dribble', and in fact English dribble vs now archaic drib).

So perhaps this Middle German *letzer is the equivalent of the Middle Saxon
*letter.  Sound-shift-wise it's perfect.

Old German has lezzen and Middle German letzen 'to hinder', 'to obstruct',
'to hamper', 'to delay', 'to damage', 'to injure', hence Modern German
verletzen
'to injure'.  And English has the archaic verb "to let" in the sense of 'to
hinder', 'to hamper', 'to prevent', 'to delay', related to the
above-mentioned and also to Old Frisian letta, Old Saxon lettian, Dutch
letten, Old Norse letja and Gothic latjan -- and all of these are related to
"late".

OK now.  This may seem like a weak candidate until you consider the
apparently related Old German adjective lezzī 'evil', 'wicked', 'wrong',
'perverse'.

Do you think we're getting somewhere now, Jonny?  If this holds any water,
we'd have to say that it's a negative word. What the game was called by
those that played it we may never know.  Power was in the hands of literate
Christians.

Kumpelmenten,
Reinhard/Ron
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