note 2). He connected dvergr and Avestan drva, the name of some (unidentifiable) physical de-formity. Bartholomae’s etymology has found a number of supporters, the most confident of whom was Krogmann (1934-35). It is not obvious what unites dvergr and drva apart from the phonetic similarity between d-v-r and d-r-v. The dwarves of Scandinavian mythology were not deformed. Bar-tholomae and others may have been inspired by the circumstance that the dwarves and elves were believed to cause diseases and produce deformity in people.
This belief has left some traces in the Germanic languages, such as N dvergskott ‘epizootic’ = and
‘dwarves’ shot’ (De Boor [1924:545]); the affected cattle are called dvergslagen. But in this respect dwarves do not differ from other spirits, fairies, and so on, as follows, for example, from G Hexen-schuß and N hekseskudd ~ hekseskott ‘lumbago,’ OE ylfa gesceot ‘disease attributed to evil spirits’ (see elfshot in OED and elf in ODEE, Lessiak [1912:136-40], and Ivanov [1999a:4-5] for a broad discussion of diseases caused by elves and their kin). E giddy, from Late OE gidig, from *gydig (the umlauted form of *gu-ig-az) probably means ‘possessed by a god.’ Likewise, OE ylfig (ielf, ylf, ylfe, ælf ‘elf’) meant ‘mad, deranged.’ The Classical Greek noun ùnqousiasm’j ‘inspiration’ derives from ‘being
pos-sessed or inspired by a god,’ so that enthusiastic is, as far as its inner form is concerned, close to giddy.
The root of the word ghost meant ‘terrify, afflict’ (cf Go usgaisjan* ‘frighten’).
Having a god in one might be beneficial or in-jurious to the person possessed. Although the dwarves, the gods, and the elves could cause in-sanity, it would be imprudent to look for the origin of the words god, elf, and Hexe (hekse) ‘witch’
among the names of demons, even if the first dwarf’s name Mótsognir or Mósognir means ‘suck-ing strength’ (Reichborn-Kjennerud [1931]). In Anglo-Saxon England, dwarves were said to cause convulsion (see BT II:dweorg and discussion in Os-theeren [1992:45]). Those names were too numer-ous and too varied.
Nothing is known about the Avestan word drva except that it occurs in a list of physical de-formities (see Derolez [1945]). Krogmann (1934-35) added Latv drugt ‘collapse, diminish’ to Av-estan drva as a cognate of *dwerg-. Neither he nor those referring to drugt in their dictionaries real-ized that it is an obscure regional word, itself in need of an etymology. Von Grienberger (1900:59) tentavely connected it with Go drauhsnos ‘frag-ments, crumbs,’ but the form and the origin of the Gothic noun seem to be beyond reconstruction.
The putative cognates of Latv drugt are OI draugr
‘dry wood’ (a homonym of draugr ‘ghost’ or the same word?), OE dry¤ge ‘dry,’ Go driusan* ‘fall,’ and Lith drugy~s ‘chill fever; butterfly’ (see Russ drozh’
‘shiver’ in Vasmer I, 540-41); finally, Lith druskà
‘salt’ is sometimes drawn into this circle. It is any-body’s guess whether drugt belongs with them.
Berneker (231) mentions it, while Fraenkel (LEW, drugy~s) does not. Wood (1914a:69/7) combined E dry and Latv drugt, and Endzelı@n in Mü¤hlenbachs (drugt) thought his idea to be reasonable, but Ka-rulis did not include drugt in his dictionary.
Endzelı@n thought of a connection between drugt and E dry as possible. Etymologies based on the obscurum per obscurius principle seldom prove to be right. Two almost impenetrable words (drva and drugt) are hardly able to shed light on the seem-ingly isolated *dwerg-, whose ties with those words are exactly what has to be established.
Since Skt dhvárati is believed to be a cognate of OHG triogan ‘deceive’ and since dhvarás- des-ignates some demonic creature, *dwerg- was as-signed to the root *dreug-a- ‘deceive.’ Seebold (1970:168-69) does not mention Zwerg; however, in KS he admits the possibility that Zwerg and (be)trügen are related. ‘Dwarf’ as ‘deceiver’ ap-pears in FT(N) (the dwarves allegedly cause visual
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aberrations, or they are dangerous, harmful crea-tures). WP I:871-72 give dhu8ergh : drugh ‘dwarf-like, deformed’ (likewise in IEW, 279); KEWA II:119 refers to IEW but translates the root dhu•er-, dhu•er\ ‘destroy by deception or cunning; injure.’ It is the confusion of ‘deformity’ and ‘deception’ that makes the etymology of dwarf so vague. We con-stantly run into *dhrugh ‘harm, deceive’ (as in Mogk [1918-19:597]—’schädigen, betrügen’) or are told that harming results in deceiving (as in Det-ter’s dictionary, Zwerg; edited out in Loewe’s ver-sion).
Although no system can be detected in the practice of lexicographers’ dealing with the origin of dwarf, in the dictionaries dependent on Fick3 the gloss ‘deformity’ prevails (so, for example, in Ze-hetmayr), while Kluge (EWDS) and his followers prefer ‘deception.’ Those who treat dwarves as deceivers rely mainly on the Sanskrit cognate;
those who look on dwarves as cripples cite the A-vestan word. Practically, all of them leave the question open, list both etymologies as uncertain, and refuse to take sides. Certainty is rare (for in-stance, L. Bloomfield [1912:258/10] refers to Fick’s solution as definitive). Equally rare are new at-tempts to explain the nature of dwarves from lin-guistic data. Thus, Scardigli and Gervasi (1978, dwarf) give *dhreugh- ‘deceive’? and suggest ‘crea-tura misteriosa’ as the original sense of dwarf; this is a rather mysterious gloss (do they mean ‘belong-ing to so-called hidden people’?). Motz (1973-74:113-14) takes the ritual deformity of the mytho-logical smith (Hephaistos and others) as her point of departure, and supports Bartholomae’s etymol-ogy (Avestan drva, Gmc dwerg-). The statements in Motz (1983:117, 118) are more cautious. Vovlundr, like Hephaistos, was indeed deformed, but none of the eddic dwarves is represented as a cripple.
4) One more hypothesis gained considerable currency at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Holthausen (1886:554) suggested that dvergr is related to Gk ssûr(ii)ffoj ‘midge.’ E.
Zupitza (1896:99) supported Holthausen and later (1899:100, 103) added OIr dergnat ‘flea’ as a cognate of sûrfoj. When A. Noreen (1894:224), Pedersen (1909:109, sec 65), and Vendryes (1912:286) gave this etymology their imprimatur, it became widely known. Skeat1 borrowed his etymology from Fick3, whereas Murray chose Holthausen’s derivation, and it appeared as proven in OED, SOD1-3, and ODEE. Only SOD3a makes no mention of it, pre-sumably because Beeler (1970:322) expressed his surprise that a major English dictionary could offer an etymology classicists had never taken seriously.
Attempts to establish the origin of sûr(i)foj have failed. Venmans (1930:72) compared the Greek word with L serpens ‘snake,’ but Kretschmer (1933:181) and Specht (1944:266/6) rejected his etymology on phonetic grounds. Fernández (1959:98) tends to agree with Wood’s idea (1919:250/101) that sûrfoj belongs with surfet’j
‘sweepings, refuse, litter,’ and s›rma ‘sweepings, refuse, heap of straw,’ sßroj ‘broom, litter, refuse,’
and s›rw ‘drag along,’ all of them allegedly from PIE *tu•er-. Frisk wonders whether sûrfoj is an onomatopoeic word, but other compendia and dic-tionaries of Classical Greek (Prellwitz, Leo Meyer, Hofmann) venture no hypotheses. Frisk and Chantraine are of the opinion that sûrfoj defies explanation. Only Boisacq compared sûrfoj and Skt dhvara¤h ‘demon.’ There is partial agreement on the fact that -f- in sûrfoj is a suffix (from *bh-), which neither invalidates the comparison sûr-f-oj:
*dwer-g-az nor strengthens it. The main argument against Holthausen’s etymology of dwarf ~ Zwerg ~ dvergr is, once again, the use of the obscurum per obscurius principle: the opaque Greek word sûrfoj cannot reveal the origin of an equally opaque Germanic word. See Petersson (1921:18) for some arguments against the dwarf—sûr(i)foj connection.
This episode in the study of dwarf is typical in that it shows the lack of coordination among the various branches of Indo-European etymology as a science. Apparently, if dwarf is related to sûrfoj, sûrfoj is related to dwarf (Zwerg, dvergr). But de-spite the prestige of OED and the high esteem in which Holthausen was held, not a single etymo-logical dictionary of Classical Greek considered dvergr as a possible cognate of sûrfoj, and among Greek scholars only Boisacq comments on the im-plausibility of Holthausen’s conjecture from the semantic point of view. Juret, who offered his own fanciful etymology of dwarf, made no mention of sûrfoj. Apart from OED, Tamm (dvärg) accepted sûrfoj as a cognate of the Germanic word, and SOAB followed him with some reservations (vol 7, containing dvärg, was published in 1925).
Hellquist rejected Holthausen’s etymology (SEO).
The other national dictionaries of the Scandinavian languages and of Dutch offer the usual choice be-tween Skt dhvárati and Avestan drva.
The latest admirer of the dvergr—sûrfoj— dergnat etymology was Güntert (1919:235-37), who cited many instances of insects as spirits. How-ever, nothing follows from his examples for dvergr.
OIr dergnat is as obscure as sûrfoj. Scandinavian folklore links dwarves and spiders, and the word dvärg means ‘spider’ in some Swedish dialects. A
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dwarves’ (or dwarf’s) net (dvärganet, dvärgsnet) as the name of the spider’s threads hanging in the air in autumn is current in many parts of Sweden.
Rietz pointed out that the dwarves were likened to spiders because they were so skillful. Schwenck repeated Rietz’s explanation in all the editions of his dictionary. The connection dwarf—spider has no value for etymology. The parallel Loki ~ Sw reg loki ‘spider,’ which SEO cites, is of no consequence, for, despite all efforts to prove the opposite, the Scandinavian god Loki has nothing to do with the spider (Liberman [1992b:132-33], repr in Liberman [1994c:219-20]), and the Welsh polysemous noun cor ‘point; dwarf; spider’ (Wilhelm Lehmann [1908:435-36]) does not make the triad dwarf—
sûrfoj—dergnat any more appealing. We can con-clude that the dwarves did not get their name be-cause they were associated with some insects or spiders and that sûr(i)foj and *dwerg-az are not related. Obviously, a word like OI dvergr ‘dog with a short tail’ (May, Zwerg) does not clarify the original meaning of dvergr ‘dwarf’ either.
Some lexicographers have listed the cognates of dwarf but refrained from conjectures on its ori-gin. Among them are Kilianus, Junius (who made the statement that since dwarf has no reliable ety-mons, it might be from Greek), Johnson, Todd in Johnson-Todd, Wedgwood, Mackay (1877), Stor-month, Skeat4, Weekley, Partridge, Barnhart, and Webster. All the revisers of Webster’s dictionary withstood the temptation of offering an etymology of dwarf until W2 gave dhvaras (without a stress mark) as a tentative cognate and listed E dream as possibly related. In W3, dhvarati (again without a diacritic) turns up. The changes from W2 to W3 show that in the absence of new ideas dictionaries substitute repackaging for research. This sem-blance of activity is typical. WNWD1 gives the Indo-European base *dhwergh- ‘delude,’ offers no cognates outside Germanic, and defines the ety-mon as ‘deceptive (that is, magic-making) being, little devil’. Later editions add Skt dhvárati ‘(he) injures,’ and *dhwer acquires the gloss ‘trick, in-jure.’ When references to the scholarly literature are included, the choice is often unpredictable.
IsEW lists many sources, among them Loewenthal (1928); NEW mentions IEW and Krogmann (1935), AEW adds Nerman (1954); DEO3 cites Krogmann (1935), Derolez (1945), and Nerman (1954); KS makes do with Lecouteux (1981), whose article contains only one page (372-73) on matters etymo-logical (Desportes’s letter to the author and the conclusion that dwarves were deformed, evil crea-tures).
All that is known about the origin of dwarf can be summed up in two short statements: 1) dwarf has numerous Germanic cognates, and 2) two words, one Sanskrit and one Avestan, sound like *dwerg, but their connection with *dwerg- is unlikely. However, someone who would dare reexamine the etymology of dwarf will not start from scratch, for on a few occasions etymologists have been within reach of what seems to be the right solution.
4. Kluge (EWDS1) suggested that Zwerg may have developed from either *dwezgo¤ or *dwergo¤. If he had pursued that line of reasoning, the etymol-ogy of Zwerg (dvergr, dwarf) would have been dis-covered then and there, but connecting the German word with a Sanskrit one looked attractive, and Kluge never returned to his idea that r in Zwerg is the product of rhotacism. However, if we assume the protoroot *dwezg-, everything will fall into place. The sound z existed in early Germanic only as the result of the voicing of s, so that *dwezg- must have been derived from *dwesg- (cf Go azgo*
versus OI aska ‘ashes’). In *dwesg-, s was voiced between a vowel (e) and a voiced consonant (g).
One has to reckon with the possibility that the pro-toform was *dwizg- rather than *dwezg- because, before r from z, i became e in all the Germanic lan-guages except Gothic, which had no rhotacism (SB, sec 45, note 3; A. Campbell 1959:sec 123; BE, sec 31;
Noreen 1970:sec 110.2, with references to Behaghel and Sievers; O. Ritter [1922:173-76]), but only
*dwezg- lends itself to etymological analysis. OFr dwirg, a doublet of dwerch, is due to the variation e
~ i before r (as in werk ~ wirk ‘work,’ berd ~ bird
‘beard,’ herd ~ hird ‘hearth,’ werd ~ wird ‘word’;
Steller [1928:sec 8, note 2]) and is irrelevant in re-constructing the Germanic protoform. Richthofen preferred dwirg as the Modern Frisian form, but later dictionaries (including WFT) give dwerch.
Dwerch is the only form in AfWb.
Van Wijk was also close to discovering the ori-gin of dwarf, but like Kluge, he missed his chance.
In EWNT2, he traced Du bedaren ‘calm down; sub-side (of a storm, etc),’ an obscure verb with cog-nates in Middle Low German and Frisian, to the root *daz-, as in Du bedeesd ‘timid’ and MDu daes
‘stupid’ (ModDu dwaas; see Skinner, above). Thus he established a connection between das- and dar-, and only one step was needed to relate Du dwerg to dwaas. Van Haeringen (EWNT, Supplement) had doubts about Van Wijk’s etymology of bedaren, but W. de Vries (1914:148) and Törnkvist (1969) ac-cepted and developed it. In NEW (bedaren), the reference to EWNT is noncommittal. Van Wijk’s
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combination is promising, and bedaren is probably one more instance of *d(w)ar-, *dwer- having r by rhotacism.
*Dwezg-, from *dwes-g-, is related by ablaut to OE (ge)dwæ¤s ‘dull, foolish; clumsy impostor’ (the same root in OE gedwæ¤smann ‘fool,’ dwæ¤snes ‘folly, stupidity,’ gedwæ¤snes ‘dementia’) (DOE), MHG twâs ‘fool,’ MHG getwâs ‘specter, ghost,’ MDu dwaes ‘foolish’ (ModDu dwaas; see above) and ge-dwas (with a short vowel) ‘stupidity, hallucination, ghost.’ The meaning ‘stupid’ tends to develop from ‘stunned,’ ‘pitiful,’ ‘unsociable,’ ‘blissfully unaware of the surrounding world,’ ‘too trustful’
(such is, for instance, G albern), and ‘too accommo-dating’ (such is E daft; its etymological doublet is deft). In historical semantics, the line between ‘stu-pid’ and ‘insane’ is easy to cross, as seen in the ori-gin of such words as silly, foolish, mad, crazy, moron, imbecile, and idiot: people called this are ‘impaired,’
‘unprotected,’ ‘benighted,’ and ‘possessed by a god or spirit’ (see the discussion of giddy above). OE dwæ¤s and MHG twâs belong with the giddy group.
A gedw椤smann and a twâs seem to have been people possessed by a *dwezgaz, that is, by a dwarf. The ancient meaning of dwæ¤s and its cog-nates was forgotten early; compare the tautological Middle Dutch compound alfsgedwas ‘phantom con-jured up by elves’ (Te Winkel [1875:101, glossary]
and VV). Each kind of being possessed, whether by the gods, the elves, or the dwarves, must have been specific enough when the words for those states were coined, but today ancient distinctions can no longer be discerned. Modern giddy ‘easily distracted; flighty; having a reeling sensation’
(previously, ‘mad, foolish’) gives no clue to the difference between OE gidig and, for example, OE ylfin, usually glossed as ‘raving mad.’ This differ-ence was hardly clear even twelve centuries ago, but at one time it must have been known; see dis-cussion in Stuart (1976). All supernatural creatures were believed to act as incubi and succubi and to cause nightmare. The second part of the com-pound nightmare is related to the name of the Old Irish female demon Mor-rı@gain (-rı@gain ‘queen’), a word with wide connections in Germanic and Slavic. The German for nightmare is Alptraum; Alp
~ Alb is ‘elf.’
The dwarves, like the elves, may have exer-cised their power at night. Only Modern Dutch has retained the adjective dwaas ‘foolish, stupid’;
yet English has dizzy, a close synonym of giddy. OE dysig, like MDu dwaes, meant ‘foolish, stupid, igno-rant’ (a meaning still current in certain modern English dialects) and had cognates in all the West
Germanic languages except Yiddish. Ray cited dizzy ‘mad with anger.’ The same root (*dus-), but with a long vowel, appears in MDu dûselen and ModDu duizeln ‘be giddy or stupid.’ The idea of sleep is present in OI dús ‘lull, dead calm,’ possibly in OI dúsa ‘be quiet,’ and ModI dúsa ‘take one’s time.’ English may have borrowed the verb doze
‘stupefy, muddle, perplex; sleep drowsily’ from Scandinavian. However, the etymon of that word (some verb like Sw reg dåsa) may itself be of Low German origin. Middle Dutch had not only dûselen but also dosich ‘sleepy.’ The Modern German ad-jective dösig ‘sleepy,’ which emerged in the 19th century, is a borrowing from Low German, and so are Sw, N, and Dan dösig ~ døsig ‘drowsy.’ OI dasast ‘become exhausted’ (from which English has daze ‘benumb the senses’) and its cognates MDu dasen ‘behave like a fool,’ ModDu dazen ‘talk non-sense, act stupidly,’ and OI dasi ‘lazybones’ have never been discussed in connection with doze, dizzy, and the rest, though while browsing in ety-mological dictionaries (for instance, NEW and AEW), one eventually restores the ties severed by the practice of writing short entries on each word rather than essays on large families. It is unlikely that dizzy has the Indo-European root for ‘breath’
(so, following IEW, 269; MA, 82).
The root *dus-, which we see in OE dysig, probably goes back to *dwus (w was regularly lost in medial position before u in Old English [SB, 150;
A. Campbell 1959:sec 470] and Old Norse [A.
Noreen 1970:sec 235, 1a]), with *dwus being the zero grade of *dwes. A sound complex like *dwezg- or *dwesk- had no affiliation with any ablaut series in Germanic. Yet the strong verb *dweskan or
*dwezgan ‘stupefy; behave in an irrational way’ is not unthinkable, for the weak Old English verb gedwæ¤scan ‘extinguish fire; abolish; blot out enmity or sin; eliminate, perish’ has been recorded. Kar-sten (1902:435-36) connected it with OE dwı¤na
‘dwindle’ (it appears erroneously). *Dweskan would have belonged to the third class: *dweskan—
*dwask—*dwuskun —*dwuskan(s), so that *dwus- fits the model. The same cannot be said about *dwes- ~ dwæ¤s, for the alternation e ~ æ¤ is irregular as long as we remain in the e—a—u—u series. Middle Dutch had the verb dûselen, apparently related to dwaes (u¤ ~ a¤), which in turn is related to gedwas (a¤ ~ a°). The posited alternation OE e° ~ æ¤ (= MHG and MDu e° ~ a¤) in *dwes- ~ dwæ¤s makes the picture even more complicated.
The alternations a° ~ a¤ and e° ~ a¤ both occur in Germanic, but they belong to different series, whereas the alternation u¤ ~ a¤ is irregular. Could it
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be that words denoting insanity, nonsense, and nightmare were often pronounced with emphatic lengthening and violated standard rules of deriva-tion because they were subject to taboo? If so, we would witness a veritable triumph of iconicity:
erratic forms designating erratic behavior. Bout-kan (1999:19) briefly mentions words with “the deviant root-vocalism P[roto]Gmc. *椗*a—*o¤”
and argues for their non-Indo-European substrate origin. It is puzzling why that type of “deviation”
occurs with such regularity. Despite all the
occurs with such regularity. Despite all the