Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.1980, Blaðsíða 15

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SUMMARY
This article deals with a few words in Modern Icelandic that are not attested in
01 sources but, nevertheless, seem to be of ancient native origin, not borrowed,
an attempt is made to explain them etymologically.
The MI nouns þokugefja and gefja refer to wisps of light fog (þoka is the stand-
ard term for fog). Gefja is also used of thin or partical cloud cover, malaise or
sluggishness, gauzy fabric and threadbare garment; the adj. gefjulegur ‘sickly;
gauzy’ also occurs. There is reason to conclude that the original sense of these
words is ‘with holes or meshy’—and that they are etymologically related to the
verbs gabba ‘fool’ and gapa ‘gape’ and hence to SW pá gavel and MI upp á gaul
‘wide open’ (used of door, etc.) and possibly also to gafði (an isolated and some-
what doubtful OI past tense form (from gafa'i)).
MI hrumi ‘gale, stiff wind’ seems etymologically related to OE hream ‘scream,
noise’ and to OI hraumi, a derogatory term for man (attested in the Prose Edda),
apparently meaning a loud, aggressive or boastfui person. NN raume (f) ‘valley
breeze, stiff cold wind’ probably has the same derivation—as possibly also Hrymr,
the name of a giant in Nordic mythology.
MI stum (n) means frost smoke, rime or dust; the adj. stumaður ‘rimy, sticky
from rime or dust’ (used of ice surface) is found, as also the (f) noun. form stymja
‘stench; malaise; slight cold’ and the verb stymja ‘be perplexed about; despair over,
breathe in a troubled way’ (used of near-dead animals). These words seem to share
origin with Far. stummur ‘congested from head cold; pitch-dark’; NN stum-myrk^
and stumen ‘pitch-dark’; G stumm ‘silent’; MI stumra ‘totter; sigh’, stamur damp
nnd stemma ‘stanch’—possibly also with 01 stund (n) ‘dust’ and NN stumla, stumra
and stumsa ‘hobble along; stumble’.
MI brum means sea foam, and the corresponding verb is bruma. The noun is
attested in a 17th-century source in the sense of frothing when fat food is boiled.
These forms are best explained in terms of ablaut relationship to brim surf
which is consistent with the earlier e in that word and its Skt cognate bhramá-h
‘eddy current, flickering flame ...’.