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English Historical Linguistics: Historical English in contact
Edited by Bettelou Los, Chris Cummins, Lisa Gotthard, Alpo Honkapohja and Benjamin Molineaux
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 359] 2022
► pp. 97–118

Chapter 6
From eadig to happy

The lexical replacement in the field of Medieval English adjectives of fortune

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This chapter discusses the demise of Old English adjectives of fortune which came to be replaced with some new items of Germanic origin, in particular Norse-derived happy and Low German or Flemish lucky. Interestingly, in this semantic field referring to abstract ideas, English did not take Romance borrowings, except for fortunate. The adjective happy was not a direct Scandinavian loanword, but an independent regular late-14th century native derivation from the originally Norse noun hap borrowed into English at least two centuries before. In Middle and Early Modern English some Old English items fell into disuse (e.g., ēadig) while others underwent major semantic shifts ((ge)sǣlig and blīðe). Using the data from several historical dictionaries of English and the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, I trace the mechanisms of replacement in the context of lexical layering, subjectification and contact-induced linguistic changes.
Keywords: lexical borrowing, contact-induced change, layering, subjectification, Old Norse, Medieval English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Old English adjectives of happiness and their further development in Middle English
    • 2.1OE ēadig > ME edi
    • 2.2OE (ge)sǣlig > ME seli
    • 2.3OE (ge)bletsod > ME blessed
    • 2.4OE blīþe > ME blithe
  • 3.Romance loanwords
    • 3.1Eurous
    • 3.2Fortunate
  • 4.The origin and development of happy
    • 4.1Etymology
    • 4.2Hap- in English
    • 4.3The noun hap in Middle English
    • 4.4The adjective happy
    • 4.5The adverb happily
  • 5.The adjective lucky
  • 6.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.359.06mol
References (37)
Sources
AND = Anglo-Norman Dictionary: [URL]
CMEPV = Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse: [URL]
DOE = The Dictionary of Old English: [URL]
DSL = Dictionary of the Scots Language: [URL]
HTE = The Historical Thesaurus of English: [URL]
MED = The Middle English Dictionary: [URL]
OED = The Oxford English Dictionary: [URL]
TOE = A Thesaurus of Old English: [URL]
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