An English “proto” prefix that disappeared but has sort of reappeared
As part of my series of Old English classes, we’ve been reading Bēowulf, the Old English epic. In case you don’t know the story: the monster Grendel has been plaguing the Danes, attacking their great hall Heorot and carrying off their warriors. Grendel is eventually defeated by our hero Bēowulf, as you’d guess.
At one point the text says that Grendel had a bag (glōf) that was made with orþanc:
Glōf hangode
sīd ond syllic, searobendoum fæst;
sīo wæs orðoncum eall gegyrwed
dēofles cræftum ond dracan fellum.
A glove hung
huge, grotesque, fast with cunning clasps;
it was all embroidered with evil skill,
with the devil’s craft and dragons’ skins.
(R. M. Liuzza)
Liuzza translates orþanc as “evil skill”. (In the text, it appears as orðoncum; the -um ending means “with; by means of orþanc” — instrumental case for you grammar nerds. 🙂 )
And indeed, the dictionary I use glosses orþanc as “skill; invention”:
(Side note: there’s a lot of academic discussion about the word glōf; why would Grendel carry a glove? A lot of translators render glōf as “bag” or “pouch”, since that seems to be the intent. Interestingly, in Norse mythology, apparently trolls carry huge gloves as bags. But the connection is unclear.)
Back to orþanc for “skill; contrivance, invention”. The word made sense to me only after I learned that þanc (the origin of “thanks”) meant “thought; favor” and that the or- prefix had a cognate in the German Ur, meaning “original” or “proto”. For example, German has the word Ursprung (“original source”). So orþanc is a “proto-thought”, i.e., invention.
The or- prefix in OE has several meanings, but in this sense of “original/proto” it also shows up in oreald, meaning “very old; primeval” (Ur-old, cognate with German uralt). The or- prefix also shows up in orlæg (Ur-law, meaning “fate, destiny”).
When I was talking with friends about orþanc on Facebook, the very first comment was “this was where the name of Saruman’s tower came from!” Apparently so, and it’s yet another example where Tolkien used his deep knowledge of Old English for world-building.
This “original” sense of the or- prefix stopped being productive in English — that is, we can’t create new words with it. But oddly, we did borrow some words from German (mostly in academic contexts) that use the equivalent Ur– prefix, as in urtext.
And maybe the German borrowing is itself a tiny bit productive. I found cites with references to ur-American, to the Ur-model of the Leica M3 [camera], and to an Ur-boutique hotel:
Friend Jonathon even found an instance of ur- (“an ur-feedback loop”) in some text about computer programming:
I don’t think this is first time that we lost something in English and then borrowed it back from another language. English has never been fussy about where it gets its words. 🙂
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