Orð og tunga - 01.06.2015, Page 22

10
Orð og tunga
Swedish and Norwegian, bevís marked as "historical". And just to
take an example, the present author, whose mother-tongue is Icelan-
dic, can only use fíve of the be-lbí-'words listed in íslensk orðabók 2002,
that is, the couple bíræfinn and bíræfni and the couple betrekk and be-
trekkja, the last two, however, sounding somewhat old fashioned in
the present author's ears; and finally bísperrtur which may not be a
loanword after all, see below.
In the 2002 edition of íslensk orðabók, the be-/bí-words are in most
cases marked as old or obsolete; and in older twentieth-century Ice-
landic dictionaries (e.g. Jón Ólafsson 1912-1915; Sigfús Blöndal (ed.)
1920-1924; íslensk orðabók 1983) they are marked with question marks
or comments such as "bad language".
iA-
This group of words did not acquire the role of a model for native
word formation in Icelandic, as it did in the Mainland Scandinavian
Languages. There are, however, a handful of Icelandic words to be
found with be-, or, more often, bí-, that have no recognized foreign
models, as was briefly mentioned above. These are the adjectives bí-
bölvaður 'damned' (or better: 'highly damned') 18th C.,8 bíflenntur 'wide
open' 18th C., bíglenntur (maður) adj. 'fop, dandy' 20th C., bíhlæjandi
adj./pres.part. 'broadly smiling' 20th C., and bímóðigur, bímóðugur 'ar-
rogant' 17th C.; the nouns beskyn n. 'understanding' 18th C. and bíleggirí
n. 'laziness' 20th C. (a possible model may, however, be found in Dan.
belægge 'put a burden on somebody'); the verbs befjötra 'tie, bind' 20th
C. (cf. Kristín Bjarnadóttir 2005:146), bíloka vb. 20th C. 'stop, stay for
a while', bískæla 'pull faces' (and past part. bískældur 'deformed') 18*
C., and bíþræta vb. 'quibble, protest strongly' 20th C. The noun bedemi
n. 'wretch, weakling, scoundrel' 19th C. shares both connotations and
formal resemblance with these words, even if it is probably, together
with its parallel form dúdemi n. 19th C., a transformation of the word
ódæmi (ódemi) n. 'sth exceptional' (the prefix ó- can both have a negat-
ing and a strengthening function).
The function and meaning of the prefíx in these new words seems
always to be strengthening or degrading/negative, and even if the
words are few, and registered examples not many, they may very
well indicate the beginning of a (subtle) trend — later reversed — to-
Most of these words only occur once in the sources; the dating is of the oldest
example.