>> What's the etymology of Norse Hrim "ice, frost" ?
>> Joao SL
********
> Hrim in Old English also (rime in Mod. Eng.). No etymology given
>in the references I have handy.
>Dan Milton
If Joao and Dan don't mind reading the speculations of an amateur, on this
occasion... Fools rush in where the angels have feared to tread, and all
that...
I see the root of "hrim" as being h+vowel+r, with -m as a suffix. "Hrim"
then appears to be a close cognate of English "hoar", and of English "grey".
The Oxford Etymological Dictionary suggests slightly different IE words for
"hoar" and "grey" - *koir and *ghregh respectively - but I think the
compilers might have been a wee bit too cautious there. Are today's
etymologists readier to merge the two roots? I have read that the (re-)
constructors of PIE posit *wos as a colours-suffix; the O Et D offers
*ghreghwos as the origin of "grey", for instance. Well, the -w- seems
gratuitous, but an -os attachment has probably come down to us in English
as -ish - among many variants, of course. Thus, *ghregh(w)os might have
meant "grey-ish". That would have been more accurate and logical: -ish
makes for a much more defensible range of colours. Many other English
colours' names seem to have similar and similarly-disguised "-ish"-type
suffixes.
If my basic premise is correct (and it may be, despite its provenance), then
the -im suffix is a puzzle. To be consistent I must claim it as adjectival,
like -ish. Vowel+m is an uncommon suffix in English; is it common in any of
the IE-derived languages? (I have no idea, and would welcome information.)
If it is, then it would be interesting to speculate on whether it might have
derived from the proposed PIE "-os". (Not impossible, but pretty awkward!)
(By the way - I feel an apology is warranted to the academics on this List,
for writing my postings in common English. I am not familiar with either
the jargon of linguistics or the conventional transliteration of phonetic
script into the standard keyboard characters. At a distance of thousands of
years and hundreds of human generations, no *amateur* enquirers should ever
dare to try to replicate the exact sounds of the speeches of the illiterate
ancients. It is more appropriate for us to paint our speculations with a
broad brush (and in the English forms we use in our own everyday lives). I
hope and trust that this List's academics - professionals and students
alike - will be tolerant of that.)
Gordon Barlow