The text in both editions is the same. It is given here in an English translation: “Ladd ‘stocking put on over another piece of clothing, woolen sock,’ in dialects also lodde, Sw reg ladder f pl ‘old shoes,’
lädder ‘socks,’ lodde ‘Frisian shoe.’ The forms with o seem to belong with lodden [‘shaggy, hairy, covered
Lad Lad
Lad Lad
with grass’], cf Nynorsk raggar and lugg with the same meaning. The vowel a may owe its origin to the synonymous N reg labbar ‘woolen socks,’ but Sw reg lädda with old umlaut speaks against this conclusion; the forms with a are perhaps related especially closely to Celtic lâtro-, as in Welsh llawdr
‘trousers,’ Cornish loder ‘shoe.’ Nynorsk ladda
‘shuffle, slouch along’ are also related; cf labbe and tøfle af [the same meaning; N tøffel ‘shoe, slipper’].
Other words belonging here are tusseladd, and Askeladd, that is, ‘someone who walks awkwardly, clumsily’ (perhaps borrowed by English as lad).”
Torp’s entry is the same, but the references to Celtic are gone. Askeladd (actually, Oskeladd)
‘ash-lad’ is male Cinderella, the third son in fairy tales, a counterpart of Icel kolbítr (literally ‘coal-biter’), Boots, as he is called in George W. Dasent’s translation of Asbjørnsen and Moe’s collection of folklore. ODEE (lad), too, uses Boots in glossing those words. Tusseladd means ‘nincompoop.’
The idea that lad was borrowed from Norwe-gian found an enthusiastic supporter in Björkman (1903-05:503; 1912:272). The comment in ODEE is also favorable: “...the earliest evidence and even modern currency point to concentration in the east and west midlands and so perh[aps] to Scand[inavian] origin (cf. Norw. aske/ladd neglected child, Boots, tusse/ladd duffer, muff.” Diensberg (1985a:330, note 7; 334) has a similiar opinion.
However, FT’s suggestion bypassed several diffi-culties: 1) Ladd has not been recorded in any Scan-dinavian language with the meaning *’(young) fellow.’ 2) Tusseladd and askeladd (oskeladd) seem to be the only compounds with -ladd, and neither could be known well enough to produce the basis for a new English word. 3) Despite some parallels, it is unclear why someone wearing woolen socks or old shoes and walking awkwardly should be called ‘fool,’ the more so because E lad never meant
‘fool, duffer, nincompoop.’ 4) Finally, the earliest recorded English form is ladde, and Tengvik (1938:257) is right that -e was not a mere graphical character in it.
On the other hand, a connection between a disparaging word for ‘young person’ and ‘shaggi-ness’ ~ ‘hose, stocking, trousers’ has been recorded elsewhere, namely among the words having the same root as E strumpet. Since the entry STRUMPET contains all the data, it will suffice to cite here only the main forms, with and without a nasal: E strum-pet ‘prostitute’ and in one dialect ‘fat hearty child,’
G struppig ‘disheveled,’ G Strumpf ‘hose, trouser leg, stocking,’ originally ‘stub, stump’; G Strunze
‘slattern,’ MHG strunze ‘stump’; early ModI
strympa (its present day variant is strumpa) ‘dipper;
tall hat; bucket; building with a cone-shaped roof;
virago, big woman’ are its cognates. The way from
‘rag’ to ‘(thing with an) uneven surface’ and ‘con-temptible person’ is also short: compare OI rovgg
‘tuft, shagginess (said about the fur on a cloak)’
(CV), Sw ragg ‘coarse hair; goat’s hair’ (see the other cognates in AEW), and Sw Raggen ‘devil’
(even if the association with ragg is secondary;
SEO), as well as such a recent coinage as Sw raggare
‘hippie’ (see more on Raggen at RAGAMUFFIN); G Lumpen ‘rag’ and Lump ‘scoundrel’ (from a histori-cal point of view Lump and Lumpen are variants of the same word). E ragtag (or tagrag) and bobtail
‘rabble’ (OED, rag-tag) are words of the same type.
OI *lodd must have existed as an informal word meaning *’ragtag; worthless fellow.’ For some rea-son, it has come down to us only in the compound Loddfáfnir. Lindquist (1956:150-52) suggested that the educational verses incorporated into Hávamál (strophes 112-37) and addressed to the otherwise unknown Loddfáfnir, were part of the initiation rite. The use of an address form consisting of an offensive slang word (*lodd) and the name of a great mythological figure (Fáfnir was the dragon killed by Sigurd [Sigurr]) would not be out of place in the rite of initiation (a youth of no conse-quence becomes a warrior and a [potential] hus-band).
The etymology of lodd- poses problems, but, contrary to Bechtel’s hesitant suggestion (1877:215), its -dd does not go back to zd. It is rather a gemi-nate typical of many expressive formations, includ-ing pet names, and its alternation with would be regular, for reinforced fricatives in Icelandic yield long stops, as in Stebbi, a pet name for Stefán, and OI koddi ‘pillow, scrotum’ versus ModI kori ‘scro-tum’ (numerous similar examples in the old lan-guage and in living speech). Grammatical, non-emphatic alternations are equally numerous. For instance, the past of loa is loddi. It follows that lodd- is probably related to the Icelandic lo- words.
The absence of an independent noun *lodd and the fact that in its disparaging sense it may be extant only in Loddfáfnir remain unexplained.
A connection between Du lot ~ G Lode and
*leudh- is certain. The same holds for Go -lauts ~ laudi* and a few words in the zero grade: Go ludja*, OE lud- in ludgæt, and Sc lud(dock). Their meanings range from ‘seedling’ (lot, Lode) to ‘Gestalt’ (laudi*),
‘object fully shaped’ (‘face,’ ‘posterior,’ ‘loin’:
ludja*, lud, luddock), and ‘shaped’ (in the suffix -lauts). The few recorded words for ‘matted hair, thick fur,’ and the like (for instance, OI loinn)
Lad Lad
Lad Lad
align themselves with the lud- words, for in both West Germanic and Old Norse, u changes to o ac-cording to regular sound laws.
OI loa ‘cling, stick to’ is more problematic.
Things that adhere to the surface make it shaggy, hairy, and rough. This is especially obvious in plant names. Middle Dutch lodwort ‘Symphytum officinale’ (comfrey) has cognates in Low German.
Stapelkamp (1946:57-60) related lod- to G Lode and explained the compound as ‘fast-growing plant with a tall stalk.’ But a similar plant name was OE lelore, though the Latin part of the gloss is La-padium (‘silverweed’?) perhaps from *le¤(a)-lore (le¤ah ‘meadow, lea’), and both plants can owe their names to the hairs on their leaves (Wilhelm Leh-mann [1906:298/6]). Despite some disagreement between Pheifer (1974:99, note 606) and Bier-baumer (BWA 3:160-65), they accept Lehmann’s etymology. It is preferable not to separate OI loi ~ OE loa ‘fur cloak’ from OI loinn ‘shaggy.’
Whether the Icelandic word is a borrowing from Old English, as Mohr (1939:158) suggested, or na-tive (which is more likely) is immaterial for the present discussion. The verb loa should be added to the loi / -lore group.
A particularly important word is OI Amlói
‘fool,’ famous as the source of Shakespeare’s Ham-let. If ó (the long vowel) in Amlói is old, it cannot alternate with o°. But the original form was proba-bly Amloi (E. Kock [1940:sec 3221] suggested the unlikely variant Ámloi). Only Nordfelt (1927:62-69) doubted that Amlói is a compound. See some even less credible suggestions in Gollancz (1898:XXXV, note). Saxo’s Amlói, the hero of a Danish chronicle, must have been called this be-cause, to avenge his father’s murder, he acted in an irrational manner. The modern reflexes of *amlói (such a common name was not recorded in Old Icelandic) are ModI amlói ‘wretch, bungler, fool’
and Nynorsk amlod ‘nincompoop.’
K. Malone (1923:52-58; 1927; 1928) summarized the extensive research into the proper name Amlói and the homonymous common name and offered his own bold hypothesis. See also Detter (1892:6-7), Meißner (1927:382-88), and ÁBM. Both aml-ói and am-lói lend themselves to an etymological analysis. If *Amloi changed to amlói under the influence of ói ‘mad,’ it perhaps meant *am-loi
‘ember lad.’ This was Bergdal’s idea (1929). K.
Malone (1929) vehemently contested it, but a good deal of what Bergdal (1931) says in his rejoinder makes sense. *Am-loi looks like an exact counter-part of Askeladd (Oskeladd). Jóhannesson (1940:2-5 and ISEW, 87) also assumed that -lói is akin to Icel
lydda and originally had a short vowel.
A question that has not been answered in a sat-isfactory manner concerns the relation between -lo- ~ -lodd and -ladd. Whitehall (1939:22), the author of the etymology of lad in MED and of the most authoritative article on this subject, traces sumarlota to the root *leudh-, as in Go liudan* ‘grow’
and its cognates, and remarks that “...OHG -lota, -lata, -latta ... is ultimately an ablaut derivative” of this root. The adverb ultimately has little value be-cause Germanic a and o belong to different ablaut series and no evidence supports Whitehall’s state-ment on the same page that all those words, “as we have seen,” are related to *leudh-. We have seen only this: “...he [Bradley] was unable to reconcile the au of Goth. -lauts with the a of ME. ladde on simple phonological grounds. Yet a moment’s thought on the peculiar social conditions of the Middle Ages should serve to reveal how easily a primary notion ‘growing youth, one not yet of man’s condition’ would pass over into the notion
‘one attendant upon or in service to another’”
(ibidem). But that is semantics, not phonetics.
Stapelkamp (1946:58), who also says that -lode and -lade are related by ablaut, cites several occurrences of LG laide but offers no explanation of the spell-ing. References to ablaut in this case should be abandoned.
West Germanic alternating forms like sumer-latte ~ sumarlode may have arisen as the result of the confusion of two roots (see KM, KS, Latte), but in the Scandinavian languages and dialects, -ladd is the only word of this structure with a. We must admit that in both West Germanic and Scandina-vian, the root lod(d)- alternated with synonymous ladd-. No regular phonetic change connects them, and they are not related by ablaut. Perhaps ini-tially they were regional variants, like ModE strap and strop.
4. If the premises set forth above are accept-able, the early history of lad, though still containing a few gaps, will no longer look obscure or uncer-tain. A biography with a blank here and there is not the same as an undocumented life. After all, we know more about Shakespeare than about Homer. The Germanic root *leudh- ‘grow’ has been attested in all grades of ablaut. In the zero grade, the words important for unraveling the origin of lad have u and o < u. The kinship of some of them is controversial, but they form a cohesive group, with the meanings referable to such concepts as ‘well-shaped,’ ‘grown,’ ‘furry, hairy, shaggy,’ not improbably ‘cling, stick to, adhere.’ Words with old o¤ occasionally have a
Lad Lad
Lad Lad
meaning suggestive of ‘growth,’ but they are not related to the derivatives of *leudh-. The root of lath and Latte is not related to them either, but lo-, for unascertained reasons, alternated with la-, at least in the Scandinavian area, and the lack of sta-bility may have resulted in some confusion of the two groups.
One of the words designating furry (woolen, hairy) objects was *lo- ~ *la- ‘woolen sock;
hose; stocking; shoe.’ It acquired the figurative meaning *’worthless fellow,’ but, again for un-clear reasons, it has come down to us only in a few compound names and nicknames, and usu-ally with an expressive geminate: OI Loddfáfnir, and *Amloi (asterisked because the recorded form has ó) and N Askeladd (or Oskeladd) ‘ash-lad’ and tusseladd (a word with folkloric over-tones). OI lydda shows that other possibilities for coining worthless people’s names from the zero grade of *leudh- also existed. Since neither
*ladd nor *lodd has been attested as a free form (*’wretch, nincompoop’) in any Scandinavian language, it must be assumed that the semisuffix -ladd, as in tusseladd, gained special popularity in northern England and developed into a regular word for *’worthless person,’ later ‘person of low birth.’ To become fully independent, it joined the weak declension (*ladd > ME ladde). This is the most probable origin of E lad. Consequently, lad is not a borrowing from Scandinavian, but rather a product of a northern English dialect heavily influenced by Scandinavian (Norwe-gian?) usage.
The idea that lad is a “corruption” of lii does not deserve credence, but lii might influence the earliest feudal sense of ME lad ‘serving man, atten-dant, varlet.’ Although ML litus and its many variants were not in active use in Scandinavia, their undiscovered Germanic etymon, usually given as *laetus (the original radical vowel in it may have been a° or a¤), probably interacted with similar-sounding synonyms derived from other roots. “A G[erman]ic *litu-, *letu-, though swamped by *le¤ta-, has left some traces. OI liar...
may well represent a type P[roto] G[erman]ic galid-jan- ‘one who travels along’The compounds sumar-lii, vetr-lii are irrelevant]; yet a technical term
*litu- may have been merged with it and may also have contributed to the formation of li n. ‘retinue’
(*galidja-)” (L. Bloomfield [1930:90-91]). See also Szemerényi (1962:186, with reference to Marco Scovazzi).
The Old English name Ladda (from Somerset) that Bradley (OED) found in Earle (1888:270),
ap-pears in a collection of documents dated 1088-1122.
The context is not helpful: Godric Ladda is men-tioned as a witness (“herto is gewitnesse godric ladda”). If Ladda is the precursor of ME ladde, the recorded history of lad will, as Weekley noted, mir-ror that of boy: first the (nick)name, then the com-mon name. However, the actual order of events must have been the opposite. Ladda, identified with N -ladd, would not be a respectable cognomen for a witness, but official medieval nicknames were often derogatory (see more on nicknames at LILLI-PUTIAN). O. Ritter (1910:472-74) dissociated himself from Bradley’s etymology of lad ‘one led’ and em-phasized a connection between lad and Ladda.
Holthausen agreed with Ritter (1935-36:326) but later preferred to derive Ladda from Landberht or Landfri (Holthausen [1951-52:9/107]). These ever-changing hypotheses found their reflection in his dictionary: three possibilities (< OE Ladda?, < N ladd?, < OE læ¤dda?) (EW1), no etymology, only the Middle English form (EW2: < ME ladde), and from OE Ladda < Landberht (EW3). In extensive lists of Scandinavian cognomens, Ladda does not turn up (Lind [1905-15; 1920-21]; Jónsson [1907], Kahle [1903; 1910], Hellquist [1912]).
Ekwall (1960) traces Lad- in the place name Ladhill (Warwickshire) to Hlod-, whose etymology is unclear. A.H. Smith II:10 mentions Ladgate and Ladhill in Yorkshire. Barnhart leaves open the question of the origin of Laddedale (ca 1160). Not only Godric Ladda had such a name. One finds Richard Ladde (Northamptonshire, ca 1175), Ywein Ladde (1177), Rog. Lade (Hampshire, 1200), Steph.
Ladde (Essex, 1205), Ricardus Ladde (1210), Walter le Ladd (Kent, 1242), and Thom. le Lad (Sussex, 1254).
Dietz (1981a:398-99) does not doubt that those names can be identified with ME ladde, though the impression is that their bearers were people occu-pying a comparatively high place in the feudal hi-erarchy (note the emphasis on their real or as-sumed French heritage).
However, since Oskeladd is called Boots in En-glish, we again have reference to footwear. Berger-son (2002) is probably right in comparing Boots with Afrikaans botje ‘pal’ and E buddy and arguing for the Dutch origin of all three nouns. Boots may have been a folk etymological interpretation of some word like buddy, and the idea that it is the name of a youngster cleaning gentlemen’s boots could arise in retrospect. The late attestation of Boots (1798) makes all conjectures on this subject fruitless, but it is hard to imagine that Dasent would have chosen the name of a servant at a hotel for the Norwegian folklore hero. Boots satisfied
Lad Lad
Lad Lad
English readers of fairy tales, and OED mentions the phrase lad of wax ‘shoemaker.’ Consequently, the presence of Sw reg ladder ‘old shoe’ among the cognates of N ladd has a few marginal counterparts on English soil.
The root *leudh- is not isolated in Germanic (see Feist, liudan), but since the vowel a in lad (as-suming that the reconstruction offered above is correct) is unetymological, Latin and Greek words like latro ‘robber; mercenary,’ lßtron ‘remunera-tion,’ and lßtrij ‘servant’ cannot be cognates of lad. By contrast, a study of words with initial s- (Icel sladdi ‘slattern’ and E slattern) may broaden our knowledge of the English word’s field of ap-plication but will not add anything to what we have learned about the origin of either OE Ladda or ME ladde. The same is true of slat, almost a doublet of lath ~ Latte, for lath ~ Latte ~ slat and lad share nothing except the thinness of their referents in the real world.
A Note on Some Other Words with the Structure l + vowel + d ()
Lad emerged against the background of nu-merous l - d () words with sexual connotations.
We do not know whether they interacted with Scand -ladd and contributed to the pejorative sense of lad or to its becoming a free form. They are given below, to make the picture complete.
Some words with long vowels between l and a dental seem to have no bearing on the cognates of lad; see, for instance, ljótr ‘ugly’ in AEW. However, it is instructive that in this group -t and -t also al-ternate, as they allegedly did in E lath ~ G Latte, and that paronyms turn up here too: OI leir
‘loathsome’ has approximately the same meaning as ljótr.
1) Words with o¤, not derived from *u¤/*au, be-tween l- and a dental
ModI lóa (adj) ‘in heat’ surfaced only in the 16th century and is at present hard to distinguish from the noun ló in the adverbial phrase á lóum, also meaning ‘in heat’ (ÁBM, 5 ló, 1 lóa). CV mis-leadingly included lóa and derived it from loa
‘cling fast’—an excellent semantic match, but o° and o¤ are incompatible. Despite the late attestation, lóa must be an old word, for it has Celtic and less certainly Slavic cognates (Lidén [1937:91-92]; IEW, 680; WP II:428; ESSI XVII:19-20, le‡tu). From Scan-dinavian it reached Frisian (Löfstedt [1948:80-81]).
OI ló ‘produce of the land’ is akin to lá ‘land’ and cannot be traced to *leudh-. G Luder, originally a hunting term (‘bait’), now a term of abuse (‘imper-tinent woman’), also had a long vowel in the past,
judging by MHG luoder and MLG lôder. The Scan-dinavian divine name Lóurr occurs only once in Old Icelandic. Nothing is known about the god Lóurr, except that, while traveling with Óinn and Hœnir, he met Askr and Embla, two trees des-tined to become the first human couple.
2) Some words of obscure origin having the structure l + vowel + dental
One such word is OI litr, recorded in the phrase litom fœra. In Bergbúatáttr, litr means ‘oar.’
In the scurrilous eddic verse Hárbarzlió 503-4, the sense may be ‘penis’ (see all the proposed interpre-tations of litom fœra in von See et al [1997:243-45]).
According to the Old Norse creation myth (Vovlospá 18), the first human couple lacked, among other things, lito góa, and received it from the god Lóurr (see above). His gift may have been good genitals rather than good complexion, as is usually believed. The origin of his name remains a matter of dispute. If it has the same root as ló(a) ‘(in) heat,’ Lóurr may have been a god of sexual urge, and his gift of the genitals would be in character.
A connection with ló ‘the produce of the land’
would fit his appearance in the capacity as a fertil-ity god. The length of the vowel in Lóurr is uncer-tain (cf Amloi, above). *Lóurr, a hairy (= virile) god, would likewise be a proper deity to supply the first man and woman with the organs of repro-duction.
Another obscure word is OS lud (Heliand 154).
After having the prophesy about himself and Elisabeth, Zacharias says that to both of them is
“lud gelid¤en, lîk gidrusnod” (‘our lud is gone, our
“lud gelid¤en, lîk gidrusnod” (‘our lud is gone, our