LL-L "Etymology" 2008.12.01 (03) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 01 December 2008 - Volume 01
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From: Joachim Kreimer-de Fries <Kreimer at jpberlin.de>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2008.01.01 (02) [E]

Am 30.11.2008 um 23:59 schrieb Jorge Potter:

So now we know that musically "rag" means a piece of old cloth from Old
English ragge, related to rugged and Old Norse rögg = tuft.


Thank you very much, dear Jorge,

for your final clarification of the semiotic background of the modern term
"ragtime" (music) and the deplorable racist connotation. That's a necessary
completion of the harmless things they gave in the radio feature I'd
listened to.

My interest in the term "rag" was mainly linguistic, semantic. But I'm not a
linguist, so my construction in "Etymology" 2008.11.25 may be erroneus and
pure "folk's etymology".

But for my simple feeling the Old Norsk "raggaðr [shaggy]" and the

piece of old cloth from Old English ragge, related to rugged and Old Norse
rögg = tuft


seem to be nearby, in wording and meaning. And would both fit in my
speculation:

The central meaning should be that of describing the surface of things as
"shaggy", in contradiction to "even" or "plain", with pinnacles, spikes,
fractions, vertices.


But this can remain unresolved, I just hoped to enrich - with "raggen",
"raggig" some LS varieties with another - as such useful - word stem...

Goutgaun!
joachim
--
Kreimer-de Fries
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