wusc

Old English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Proto-West Germanic *wunsk, from Proto-Germanic *wunskaz. Cognate with Old High German wunsc, Old Norse ósk.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /wuːsk/

Noun

wūsc m

  1. wish
  2. choice

Usage notes

  • The declension table below shows the inherited distribution of *sk according to Ringe: "medially *sk was apparently palatalized unless a back vowel followed; finally it was palatalized unless a back vowel preceded."[1] However, in a word like wūsc the distribution could have been leveled in either direction by the literary period, as it is not nearly as simple as in words like disċ (“dish”) where it would have been neatly divided between singular and plural. In the case of the rhyming word tūsc, it was leveled at least by the Middle English period, producing Modern English tusk as well as Middle English and dialectical Modern English tush. Note that the modern noun wish is derived from the (much more frequent) verb and so does not provide evidence either way.

Declension

Strong a-stem:

singular plural
nominative wūsc wūscas
accusative wūsc wūscas
genitive wūsċes wūsca
dative wūsċe wūscum

Derived terms

Descendants

  • Middle English: wusch, wucshe, wush (merged with Middle English wische, wisshe, derived from wisshen)

References

  1. ^ Ringe, Donald, Taylor, Ann (2014) The Development of Old English (A Linguistic History of English; 2), Oxford: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 204
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.