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An etymological note: OldEnglish drygan ’to make dry’Gillis KristenssonPublished online: 21 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Gillis Kristensson (1971) An etymological note: OldEnglish drygan ’to make dry’, Studia Neophilologica, 43:1, 257-259, DOI:10.1080/00393277108587496

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An Etymological Note: Old Englishdrygan 'to make dry'

The Middle English Dictionary (MED) derives ME drien 'to dry, tomake dry'1 from OE drygan, gedrygan, OK ādrēgan, evidently taking theOld English form to contain i-mutated Germ ū. The same etymology issuggested by Holthausen in Altenglisches etymologisches Wörterbuch,where the verb is registered in the form drygan and is compared with LowGerman drûgen. Bosworth-Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, lists theforms drigan, drygan and drigean but does not enter upon the etymology.The Oxford English Dictionary refers OE drys(e)an, dri^(e)an to OEdry$e, adj., ( < *dru$i-), and thus sides with the other authorities about theetymology of OE drygan.

The etymology proposed has not so far been challenged, but there aresome Middle English forms which contradict derivation of OE dryganfrom PrGerm *drū^iian. The relevant forms are: Alic. le Dreyster' 12921. Ass2 17, 1292 2. Ass 31 in Lancashire, Adam Dreyster 1301 SR3 103,Agnes le dreystr' 1301 SR 10 in Yorkshire. There can be no doubt thatthe surnames are derivatives formed from the verb drygan (with thesuffix -stere), and have the meaning 'one who dries something'. They areso interpreted by Fransson4 and MED, and no reviewer has contestedthe etymology. But the surname Dreyster, found in Lancashire andYorkshire documents, cannot possibly go back to an OE form with'festes' y, so the etymology of OE drygan has to be reconsidered.

OE drygan 'to make dry' is a causative verb, and a number of suchverbs are formed (with -{an or -nan) on the ablaut stage which appears

1 The Middle English Dictionary, in contradistinction to the Oxford EnglishDictionary, does not keep the transitive verb apart from the intransitive one. Thepresent article is only concerned with the former.

2 Ass = Assize Rolls (unpublished, Public Record Office), 1. = no. 409,2. =no. 415.

3 SR = Lay Subsidy Rolls printed in The Yorkshire Archxological Society.Record Series. Vol. XXI (1897).

4 G. Fransson, Middle English Surnames of Occupation 1100-1350 (Lund,1935).17 — 702845 Studia Neophilclogica

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258 GILLIS KRISTENSSON

in the pret. sg. of strong verbs. Instances in point are OE blegan, firan,lecgan, sencan, and settan. The form Dreyster suggests that OE dryganis such a formation, i.e. goes back to PrGerm *drau^iian which would beOE (Angl, Kent) *drēgan, (WSax) *driegan, drlgan.

OE *drēgan would be ME drīen,1 at least in the dialect from whichStandard English developed.2 A derivative of OE *drēgan and -stere, i.e.*drēgestere, would be ME driestere, which is exemplified in MED s.v.driere, driestere. OE *dregstere (with syncope of medial -e-), on the otherhand, would be ME dreystere3 and would account for the above Lanca-shire and Yorkshire forms.

There are three forms of the transitive verb in MED sub drīen v. (1)that are not reconcilable with derivation from OE *drēgan, two of themoccurring in *Trev. Barth: [Boars] wrappep hem infenne and druyep hem-self in sonne and Soure pynges druyep it wip druyenesse & byndeih it wipcolde.* The text has not been available to me. MED ranks it as an EastMidland one, but druyep cannot possibly be East Midland, whether wetake the antecedent to be OE drygan ( < ̂ drū^iian) or *drēgan ( < *drau-Tļiiari). The form druyep5 may be due to a Southern scribe and may representthe 3rd pers. of the près. ind. sg. of OE (WSax) *drlegan, later drygan,which would be ME druien.6 Comparison may be made with the follow-ing ME forms of OE blegan, by gan (<*baupian) 'to bend' quoted fromMED: I-buyd, i-buid, i-buyd SLeg. Mich., buyede Glo. Chron. A, buydeGlo. Chron. A, buye [rime: anuye] SLeg. Becket, y-buyed SLeg. Pass.It is true that OE (WSax) le tended to become Î before palatals,7 butthere is evidence of ̂ -spellings, too, in this position, v. Bosworth-Toller,s.w. b-ygan, cigan, icon. Whether the letter y denoted a rounded sound or

1 See Jordan, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik, § 97: 1 b, Ekwall,Historische neuenglische Laut- und Formenlehre, § 69.

2 The development of late OE antevocalic ēg differed in ME dialects. In someareas it was preserved, but in most dialects it was diphthongized (to ft). Thediphthong later became ī in certain dialects but remained in others. Cf. Serjeantson'The Development of Old English ēag, ēah in Middle English', The Journal ofEnglish and Germanic Philology 26 (1927).

3 Jordan, op. cit., § 97: 1a.4 Cf. the form of ME drīen in the following quotation from *Trev. Barth:

Pesonne ... clensip ... le eire... and driep awey pestilent ayer (MED).5 It should be noted that druyep in the second example may simply be due to

influence from the following druyenesse. Also in the first example druyep may bedue to similar influence.

6 Jordan, op. cit., § 83.7 Bülbring, Altenglisches Elementarbuch, § 306 C, Luick, Historische Grammatik

der englischen Sprache, § 281; 2.

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AN ETYMOLOGICAL NOTE 259

was only a spelling of i cannot be decided from the OE material.1 Thequestion will, it is hoped, be solved when we have the full ME materialfrom south-western England. The uy- (Misspellings for the ME reflexof WSax Megan, bygan, however, lead us to suppose that at least in someparts of the south-western area OE (WSax) fe became y before palatals.This is tacitly assumed by Jordan (§ 83) who adduces buie as an exampleof a surviving south-western rounded vowel. In view of this it is justifi-able to propose that druyep is a form of ME druien from OE (WSax)drygan ( < *drīegan) just as I-buyd, i-buid, etc. are forms of ME buienfrom OE (WSax) bygan, Megan.

The third relevant form is found in $efhit is i-druyet to druye in EarlyEnglish Receipts for Painting, Gilding &c edited by T. Wright in TheArchaeological Journal 1 (1845), PP* 64-66. The text, which can be datedto the early 14th century, exhibits West Midland features, and the scribeis to be connected with the southern part of the West Midland area asOE/- is generally v- {Vorte [OEfor tō], i-vallen[O~Egefallen], vasne [OEfœstnian], so vorth [OE szcā forp], vleote [OE flēotan]). Further, chalk[OE cealc] appears in a Saxon garb. In a text of such provenance we maysuspect i-druyet2 to represent the pa. part, of ME druien from WSaxdrygan ( < *drtegan).

To sum up, ME dreyster 'one who dries something' can only be ex-plained from OE *drëgan + -stère. As no forms of ME drten 'to makedry' forbid derivation from OE (Angl, Kent) *drēgan, (WSax) *drlegan,drïgan, it seems safe to infer that OE drigan, drygan, drigean 'to makedry' are from PrGerm *draujiian, not from *drū^iian.

1 Bülbring, op. cit., § 306 C, Anm. 2.2 i-druyet may, however, simply be due to influence from the following druye.

GiLLis KRISTENSSON

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