(noun) and (adjective) are two

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

terms of

insult An insult is an expression, statement, or behavior that is often deliberately disrespectful, offensive, scornful, or derogatory towards an individual or a group. Insults can be intentional or unintentional, and they often aim to belittle, of ...

, denoting

effeminacy Effeminacy or male femininity is the embodiment of feminine traits in boys or men, particularly those considered untypical of men or masculinity. These traits include roles, stereotypes, behaviors, and appearances that are socially associated wi ...

or other unmanly behaviour. ' (also ') is "unmanly" and ''ergi'' is "unmanliness"; the terms have cognates in other

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoke ...

such as ', ', ''arag'', or ''arug''.

''Ergi'' in the Viking Age

To accuse another man of being ' was called ''scolding'' (see ') and thus a legal reason to challenge the accuser in ''

holmgang Holmgang (, , Danish language, Danish and , ) is a duel practiced by early medieval Scandinavians. It was a legally recognized way to settle disputes. The name ''holmgang'' (literally "holm-going") may derive from the combatants' dueling on a sm ...

''. If ''holmgang'' was refused by the accused, he could be outlawed (full

outlaw An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. ...

ry) as this refusal proved that the accuser was right and the accused was '. If the accused fought successfully in ''holmgang'' and had thus proven that he was not ', the ''scolding'' was considered what was in

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

called ', an unjustified, severe defamation, and the accuser had to pay the offended party full compensation. The

Gray Goose Laws The Gray Goose Laws ( {{IPA, is, ˈkrauːˌkauːs}) are a collection of laws from the Icelandic Commonwealth period. The term ''Grágás'' was originally used in a medieval source to refer to a collection of Norwegian laws and was probably mi ...

states:

Saleby Runestone

Although no runic inscription uses the term ',

runestone A runestone is typically a raised stone with a runic alphabet, runic inscription, but the term can also be applied to inscriptions on boulders and on bedrock. The tradition of erecting runestones as a memorial to dead men began in the 4th centur ...

Vg 67 in Saleby, Sweden, includes a curse that anyone breaking the stone would become a ', translated as a 'wretch', 'outcast', or 'warlock', and ', which is translated as 'maleficent woman' in the

dative In grammar, the dative case (abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob a drink". In this exampl ...

.Project Samnordisk Runtextdatabas Svensk
-

Rundata The Scandinavian Runic-text Database () is a project involving the creation and maintenance of a database of transliterated runic inscriptions. The project's goal is to comprehensively catalog runestones in a machine-readable way for future resea ...

entry for Vg 67. Here ' appears to be related to the practice of ' and represents the most loathsome term the

runemaster A runemaster or runecarver is a specialist in making runestones. Description More than 100 names of runemasters are known from Viking Age Sweden with most of them from 11th-century eastern Svealand.The article ''Runristare'' in ''Nationalencyklo ...

could imagine calling someone.

Modern usage

In modern Scandinavian languages, the lexical root ' has assumed the meaning "angry", as in

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

Bokmål Bokmål () (, ; ) is one of the official written standards for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. Bokmål is by far the most used written form of Norwegian today, as it is adopted by 85% to 90% of the population in Norway. There is no cou ...

and

Nynorsk Nynorsk (; ) is one of the two official written standards of the Norwegian language, the other being Bokmål. From 12 May 1885, it became the state-sanctioned version of Ivar Aasen's standard Norwegian language (''Landsmål''), parallel to the Da ...

', or Danish '. Modern Icelandic has the

derivation Derivation may refer to: Language * Morphological derivation, a word-formation process * Parse tree or concrete syntax tree, representing a string's syntax in formal grammars Law * Derivative work, in copyright law * Derivation proceeding, a ...

', meaning "to seem/appear irritable", similar to Bokmål ''ergre'', meaning "to irritate". (There are similarities to the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

', "annoying, annoyed", and

Dutch Dutch or Nederlands commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands ** Dutch people as an ethnic group () ** Dutch nationality law, history and regulations of Dutch citizenship () ** Dutch language () * In specific terms, i ...

', "irritating" and ', "to irritate".) In modern Faroese the

adjective An adjective (abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that describes or defines a noun or noun phrase. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives are considered one of the main part of speech, parts of ...

' means "angry/annoyed" and the

verb A verb is a word that generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual description of English, the basic f ...

' means to "taunt" or "bully". In modern Dutch, the word ' has become a fortifier equivalent to English ''very''; the same is true for the old-fashioned adjective ' in German, which means "wicked" (especially in compounds as ' "malicious" and ' "unsuspecting"), but has become a fortifier in the

Austrian German Austrian German (), Austrian Standard German (ASG), Standard Austrian German (), Austrian High German (), or simply just Austrian (), is the variety of Standard German written and spoken in Austria and South Tyrol. It has the highest prestige ( ...

. The meaning of the word in Old Norse has been preserved in loans into neighboring

Finnic languages The Finnic or Baltic Finnic languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7 million speakers, who live mainly in Finland and Estonia. Traditionally, ...

: Livonian ārga,

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...

' and Finnish ', both meaning "cowardly".

References

External links

*
SAOB: Arg.adj
*

* [https://web.archive.org/web/20081001190615/http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/ark/education/CD/Cuppsats/CHT04/adolfsson.pdf Adolfsson, Lars: Germanska mannaförbund. Existens och initiation. Bachelor's thesis, Uppsala 2004]
Viking Answer Lady
{{Religion and LGBT people Male gender nonconformity Pejorative terms for effeminacy Gender-related stereotypes Old Norse