bigge

v. (wk.)

Gaw pres. 3 sg. biges; Cl pp. bigged; Pat past 3 sg. bigged; Erk pp. buggyd, buggid; WA pres. pl. biggis, pp. biggid (bigged, bigget)

'to settle, found, build, make' (Modern English big)

Etymology

cp. OIcel byggva (byggja) ‘to settle, inhabit’, ordinarily accounted for as a product of Verschärfung and thus probably < a PGmc *ƀewwjan- or *ƀuwwjan-, although there is no Go cognate with Verschärfung.cp. the WGmc wk. forms OE bȳan, OFris būwa, OS būan, OHG buen (on the related str. verbs see busk). On the evidence for WGmc forms in /ɡ/, see Dance.

PGmc Ancestor

*ƀewwjan- or *ƀuwwjan- 

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

byggva (byggja) 'to settle, inhabit'
(ONP byggja, byggva (2) (vb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far byggja, Icel byggja, Norw byggja, Dan bygge, Sw bygga

OE Cognate

?bȳan 'to inhabit, live, dwell'

Phonological and morphological markers

Sharpening of ON /ggw/ &lt; PGmc */ww/

Summary category

A1*bc

Attestation

Recorded from Orrm, mainly but not exclusively N and E in ME and derived forms in place-names; MnE N dial (obsol.).

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 9, 20; Cl 1666; Pat 124, Erk 37, 207; WA 1366, 2215, 2256 etc.

 At WA 2256, the D MS reads to be beld for bigge.

Bibliography

MED biggen (v.) , OED3 big (v.1) , HTOED , EDD big (v.2), Dance bigge, Bj. 32, de Vries byggja (2)/byggva, Mag. byggja (1)/†byggva, Bj-L. bygge, Seebold bōww-a-, Orel *ƀōwwjanan, Kroonen *buwwēn, AEW bȳan