Abstract
I discuss here the etymologies of two problematic words in the 'AB Language', keaft and onont. The form keaft (which is preferred over the alternative reading keast) is found in Middle English only in one occurrence in Ancrene Wisse. Previous suggested derivations from OE ciefes, from medieval Dutch, and from ON ákefð are rejected in favour of a hypothetical native cognate of the latter, OE *cæfþ, which is the form most likely to lie behind the spellings of keaft in the manuscripts of Ancrene Wisse, and also provides a satisfactory sense for the word ('boldness, brazen behaviour'). The distinctive AB preposition onont, 'with regard to', seems to be related to the more widespread ME anent, but cannot be derived easily from the same source (OE on efn, on emn plus excrescent final -t) via phonetic changes alone. Substitution of another morpheme for OE efn is probable, but an earlier suggestion that this morpheme was ON jamt is less likely than that a form of OE and-, ond- is responsible. Introduction of this latter explains the different orthographic reflexes in the AB texts, and may have occurred relatively recently in order to make sense of the morphologically-opaque anent.
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Dance, R. Two Difficult Words in 'AB'. Neophilologus 85, 635–646 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011849417720
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011849417720