n. (pl.)
'sister's sons, nephews'
(Modern English sister)cp. OIcel systir ‘sister’, Runic Norw swestor < PGmc *swestēr, *swestōr; cp. OE sweostor (swester, swustor etc.), Go swistar, OFris swester, OS swestar, OHG swester, and for the compound note further OIcel systra-sonr. Scandinavian input is likely in light of the difficulty in obtaining late OE /y/ in this word other than < ON /y/. Loss of /w/ is not especially distinctive, and can be paralleled in e.g. OFris suster, MDu and MLG suster (see further Boutkan/Siebinga s.v. swester). The source of ON /y/ is generally accounted for as */we/ > */wi/ by i-mutation in the nom./acc. pl. *swistriR; this vowel was then generalized throughout the paradigm, and developed further (perhaps via a diphthongal stage */ui/) > /y/, probably as the result of labial mutation in the acc./gen./dat. sg. form (*suistur > systur) (see Heusler §75.1, Noreen §77.12, Brøndum-Nielsen §88, de Vries, Bj-L).
PGmc Ancestor
*swestēr, *swestōr
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
systir ‘sister’
(ONP systir (sb.))
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
Far systir, Icel systir, runic Norw swestar, Norw syster, ODan runic systiʀ, ODan systir, systær, Dan søster, Sw syster
OE Cognate
sweostor (swester, swustor etc.) 'sister'
Phonological and morphological markers
/y/ < ON /y/
Summary category
A1*c
ME forms in <i, y> are found as early as a1325(c1250) Gen.& Ex.(Corp-C 444). They are widespread across the N, EM and EAngl, but scarcely found at all in the SWM or S (Electronic LALME (map 2430001). LAEME dot map 01949601 plots only a handful of occurrences, in Yks. and Nrf.
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Gaw 111
Some editions treat Gaw 111 as a phrase rather than a compound (sister sunes, thus e.g. Madden, Morris, GDS, CA, Vant), and sister is parsed as a gen. sg. by GDS.