Orð og tunga - 01.06.2015, Síða 21

Veturliði G. Óskarsson: Loanwords with the prefix be- 9
2.2 be-/bí-words in Modern Icelandic
Today, words with the prefix-doublet be-/bí- are next to unknown to
the Icelandic public, and even if Modern Icelandic dictionaries list
some twenty words, they are practically unusable, both in daily lan-
guage and in more formal texts. The main dictionary of Modern Ice-
landic, íslensk orðabók, 3rd edition from 2002, has the following ones:7
(4) bekenna/bíkenna vb. 'suit, follow (in card games)', bestikk n. 'chart
room', betrekk n. 'wallpaper', betrekkja vb. 'cover with wallpaper',
bevís n. 'proof', bevísa vb. 'prove', bevísing f. 'proof', befala/bífala
vb. 'order, command', bífal(n)ing(ur) f./m. 'command', bífaln-
ingsmaður m. 'sheriff', bíleggja vb. 'besiege', bíræfinn adj. 'daring,
impudent', bíræfii f. 'foolhardiness', bísperrast vb. 'boast of sth',
bísperrtur adj. 'self-assured, proud', betala/bítala vb. 'pay', betal(n)-
ing(ur)/bítal(n)ing(ur) f./m. 'payment'.
Danish equivalents to the words in (4) are the following: bekende, be-
stik, betræk, betrække, bevis, bevise, bevisning, befale, befalning, befalnings-
mand, belægge, beræven (Old Danish), bespærret (so according to Asgeir
Blöndal Magnússon, but see comment below), betale, betalning. (It is
somewhat suspicious that the word bíræfinn is first attested in Icelan-
dic in the nineteenth century; the word is not part of Modern Danish
and it is not mentioned in the Danish Historical Dictionary, covering
the period 1700-1950, but is to be found in Danish texts from the fif-
teenth and sixteenth centuries, according to Gammeldansk Ordbog and
the Old Danish Dictionary of Otto Kalkar, 1881-1918, vol. 1, p. 162.)
For comparison, only one of these words, bísperrtur, is listed in the
most recent Icelandic-English dictionary (Sverrir Hólmarsson et al.
2009; the word was not in the first edition in 1989). No other be-/bí-
words are in the dictionary. The same goes for other printed bilingual
Icelandic dictionaries that have been consulted; bísperrtur, bíræfinn
and bíræfni are occasionally included but not other be-/bí-words. In
the web based dictionary ISLEX, betrekk, betrekkja, bevís, bíræfinn, bí-
ræfni and bísperrtur are to be found, with translations into Danish,
7 A few words have been left out here, words that etymologically do not belong
to this group, even if they look alike, e.g. bíleggjari m. from Dan. bilægger, Germ.
bilegger (stressed prefix, Germ. bi-) 'jamb stove, stove fed from another room', and
bígerð f. (sth is in bígerð = sth is 'being planned') which is, according to Asgeir Blön-
dal Magnússon (1989), some sort of an adaptation of Dan. gære, Old Danish gerd(e)
'fermentation', cf. der er noget igære 'sth is in the pipeline'.