n.
WA glaam
‘din, noise of merrymaking, uproar, speech’
(Modern English glam)cp. OIcel glamm (later glamr) ‘noise, tinkling sound’ and Scandinavian cognates including OSw glam ‘noise, loud chatter’, Dan glam ‘noise, clatter, barking of dogs’. The ulterior etymology of the glam- root is unclear: OED calls it ‘probably echoic’, and it has sometimes (see de Vries, Mag.) been related to OIcel gjalla ‘to yell’, gala ‘to crow, sing’ (cp. OE giellan, galan) or hlamma ‘to give a dull, heavy sound’ (i.e. supposing a PGmc *ga-xlam-.
PGmc Ancestor
?*ga-xlam-, ?*glam
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
glamm ‘noise, tinkling sound’
(ONP glamm (sb.))
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
Icel glam, glamm, Norw glam, Dan glam, OSw glam, Sw glam
OE Cognate
Phonological and morphological markers
Summary category
BB1c
Attested in ME only in the Gawain-poet and WA (Ashm 44); in MnE dial from Sc. and Som.
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Gaw 1426, 1652; Cl 499, 830, 849; Pat 63; WA 5504
PS and McGillivray read glam(m) for MS <glaum> at Gaw 46 (see glaum)