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Scandinavian Loanwords in English in the 15Th Century

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Scandinavian Loanwords in English in the 15Th Century Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 55 (2020): 119–137 doi: 10.2478/stap-2020-0005 THE ADVERSARY OR THE DEVIL?: SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF WIÞER-NOUNS IN OLD ENGLISH MARTA SYLWANOWICZ1 & ANNA WOJTYŚ2 ABSTRACT The examination of Old and Middle English religious lexis has attracted attention of many scholars. However, there are hardly any studies that would offer a comprehensive diachronic analysis of the terms denoting ‘Satan/(the)Devil’. The authors of the present study aim to fill this gap by conducting a systematic analysis of early English lexical field of ‘(the) evil spirit’, beginning with the analysis of Old English items that could potentially refer to ‘Satan/(the)Devil’ This paper discusses wiþer-nouns in Old English with the aim to verify which of them were applied with reference to ‘(the) evil spirit’. Thus, the texts compiled in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus have been searched for all the above-listed items. The identification of their uses has allowed us not only to determine the frequency of the words in question but also to specify whether the sense of ‘(the) evil spirit’ was core or peripheral for each lexeme. Keywords: Old English lexis; wiþer; agent nouns; (the) Devil; evil spirit; corpus study. 1. Introduction: Earlier studies on the concept of ‘(the) evil spirit’3 The majority of works that concentrate on the concept of ‘(the) evil spirit’ are non-linguistic studies which offer a cultural survey of the idea and trace the 1 Institute of Specialized and Intercultural Communication, Faculty of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw; ul. Szturmowa 4, 02–678 Warsaw, POLAND. [email protected] 2 Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, ul. Hoża 69, 00–681, Warsaw, POLAND. [email protected] 3 In available literature one can find many references to the main adversary of God, e.g., Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, fiend, archdemon, or devil. The last item is used as a general term with reference to ‘evil spirit, wicked person, adversary’ or, when capitalized, it denotes the ‘supreme evil spirit, Satan’ (cf. also HTE categories: Deity (01.17.04) – A devil (01.17.04.05) – The Devil/Satan (01.17.04.05)). Despite different labels or spelling conventions, all denotations of the adversary of God are usually defined as some ‘evil power, spirit’. Therefore, to avoid misunderstandings, in the present study we use the label ‘(the) evil spirit’ since it covers all potential references to what is commonly understood as Satan/Devil. 120 M. Sylwanowicz and A. Wojtyś development of the image of the Devil, Satan or Lucifer from antiquity to the present days. To mention a few, Pagels (1995) focuses on the representation of Satan in the Old and New Testament, i.e., the Jewish and Christian perception of ‘evil’, tracing Christian misconceptions about Satan, which might have led to stigmatization of Jews, pagans, and heretics. Similarly, Russell, in his three- volume work shows how ‘(the) evil spirit’ was portrayed (1) from ancient times to the advent of Christianity (the Devil, 1977), (2) in early Christian tradition (Satan, 1981), and (3) in the Middle Ages (Lucifer, 1984). Interestingly, these studies reveal that Satan was not originally used with reference to any spiritual being but was perceived as an obstacle (especially in the Old Testament and the Jewish tradition), developing later into the notion of ‘enemy/adversary’ and eventually into ‘Satan, devil, evil spirit’. Stanford (1996) explores how people used the Devil to explain all the misfortunes and human suffering.4 As regards linguistic studies, there is a striking dearth of publications focusing on the origins and the use of vocabulary employed with reference to ‘(the) evil spirit’. The short list includes an article by Barton (1912), who records the names of fallen angels and demons with a brief explanation of their origin and use, Käsmann’s (1961) examination of selected references to the devil in Early Middle English (1100–1350) writings, and a study by Esquibel & Wojtyś (2012) discussing the use and distribution of two Middle English euphemisms for Satan (fiend and enemy) in religious prose. Surprisingly, lexical units denoting ‘(the) evil spirit’ are ignored in works devoted to the religious terminology in the history of English. Łodej (2012), for instance, discusses the semantic development of the terms used with reference to Christian clergy, Newman (2006) deals with the items denoting Christian identities, while Timofeeva (2017) examines the diffusion of three loans (gospel, martyr, magister) in Old English. In her later studies (2018, 2019), she concentrates on the loss and survival of Old English religious vocabulary in Middle English. Even Chase (1988), whose work is a significant contribution to the studies of English religious lexis from the Anglo-Saxon times to the present, omits items denoting beings and places of the supernatural world, i.e., the lexis representing crucial religious domains such as GOD, ANGEL, DEVIL, HEAVEN or HELL. Instead, he focuses on five categories: (i) belief, doctrine, and spirituality, (ii) churches, sects, and religious movements, (iii) the institutional church, (iv) worship, ritual, and practice, and (v) artefacts (Chase 1988: 41). On account of the above, the ultimate goal of our research is to offer a comprehensive account of the development of Old and Middle English 4 The question of the representation of Devil in literature was also addressed in doctoral studies, e.g., Johnson (1993), Dendle (2001), Robertson (2014). The adversary or the devil? 121 vocabulary referring to the concept of ‘(the) evil spirit’. The present paper addresses one group of such words. 2. Aims of the study Among Old English items used with reference to ‘evil spirit, devil, Satan’, there is a group of words containing wiþer-, deriving from IE *wi- ‘separation, division’ and a comparative suffix *-tero- (OED, wither, adj. and adv.). In the Bosworth–Toller dictionary (B–T), the element wiþer is identified as a preposition meaning ‘against’ or an adverb ‘against, in opposition’ (B–T, wiþer, prep. adv). The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which classifies it as a prefix, adds two more denotations: ‘in return or compensation, counter-’ and ‘in the opposite direction, back’ (OED, wither-, prefix). Regardless of its primary function, the element wiþer- often appeared in combinations with other lexemes, forming, among others, 14 agent nouns (B–T)5. Due to the sense of wiþer-, the majority of such nouns carried the meaning ‘adversary, opponent’ and thus could potentially refer to ‘(the) evil spirit’. Such a hypothesis follows Forsyth’s (1989: 4) explanation that “both the Hebrew word stn and the Greek diabolos have root meanings similar to that of the English word ‘opponent’ – someone or something in the way, a stumbling block”. Thus, the core meaning of Satan’s name is that of an adversary. These findings are supported by other authors, e.g., Johnson (1993) or Esser (2006), whose studies reveal that “without the mechanism of opposition, there would also be no evil” (Esser 2006: 114). Therefore, it is assumed that all nouns with the sense ‘adversary’ had the potential of appearing with reference to ‘(the) evil spirit’. The main aim of the present study is to verify which wiþer-nouns were applied with such a reference. Once those nouns have been singled out, we focus on their frequency and context of use to specify whether the sense of ‘(the) evil spirit’ was core or peripheral for each lexeme. Also, the textual distribution of wiþer-nouns is examined to reveal if any of the words was confined to either religious or non- religious sources. The underlying theoretical model of this study is that of prototype semantics, where a prototype is “a typical instance of a category, and other elements are assimilated to the category on the basis of perceived resemblance to the prototype; there are degrees of membership based on degrees of similarity” 5 Since the status of the element wiþer- is uncertain, it seems impossible to determine whether the analysed lexemes are compounds or derived forms. Especially that there are no sufficient criteria that would allow for a clear distinction between the two formations, especially in Old English texts (cf. Sauer 1992: 714). Therefore, in the study all forms are discussed cumulatively. 122 M. Sylwanowicz and A. Wojtyś (Langacker 1987: 371). The membership in the category is determined by following the criteria proposed by Geeraerts (1997: 11), which would allow to present the examined material as a “network of lexemes”, where the central element is surrounded by less typical examples that are not limited by any boundaries, and that reflect different level of prototypicality. Thus, there are items close to the centre, and those that are put in the far end of the category. 3. Data To identify the wiþer-nouns used with the reference to ‘(the) evil spirit’, first historical dictionaries and thesauri have been consulted. Interestingly, no such sense can be found for the nouns in question in B–T. For the majority of wiþer- nouns the dictionary provides the sense ‘adversary’, which is assigned to 10 agent nouns: wiþerbersta, wiþerbreca, wiþerbroca, wiþercora, wiþer-flita, wiþerling, wiþersaca, wiþerwengel, wiþerwinna, and wiþer-feohtend. The remaining four lexemes are explained as carrying different senses: wiþercwida and wiþersprecend denoted ‘contradictor’, wiþerbroga ‘terror caused to an adversary’, while wiþer-crist meant ‘Antichrist’ (B–T). Although ignored by B–T, the sense ‘(the) evil spirit’ is listed in the Thesaurus
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