legg

n.

Gaw pl. legez, leggez; WA lege, pl. leggis, leggez

'leg' (Modern English leg)

Etymology

Always derived from ON, cp. OIcel leggr ‘leg, hollow bone (of arms and legs)’.  Its further etymology is obscure, and the only clear cognate outside NGmc is Langobardic lagi ‘thigh’, indicating a PGmc *lag-ja- with ON -gg- owing to gemination before [j] rather than Verschärfung. This PGmc *lag- is difficult to account for, but has often been explained by comparison with supposed cognates like Lat lacertus ‘(upper) arm’, presuming a PIE *lVk-, and in that case plausibly connected to OIcel lær ‘thigh’ (< PGmc *lah(w)az, or perhaps *lēh(w)az, without Verner's Law on the same root *lVh-) and perhaps also to OE lēow ‘thigh’ (< *legwaz, with Verner's Law). Lidén (1906: 365–7) (and Pokorny 673, AEW s.vv. lēow, līra) also attaches OE līra ‘flesh’ to this group, < a PGmc *ligiz- (though see further Kroonen s.v. *lehizan-).  On the other hand Bj-L.  prefer to derive leggr < the PGmc *lag- ‘lay’ root (as in OIcel leggja, OE lecgan etc.); they interpret *lag-ja- as a ja-stem agent noun with the original sense ‘(out)lier, extremity’, and regard compounds like OIcel armleggr ‘arm’, fótleggr ‘leg’ as the context for the semantic transfer to ‘limb’. Native origin is implausible, given the lack of anything to suggest assibilated /dʒ/ in any of the English reflexes of leg (even if the non-palatalization of medial /ɡ/ cannot strictly be regarded as a test of a loan), and the late attestation in English of a word for such a basic concept supports the likelihood of derivation from ON.

PGmc Ancestor

*lag-ja- 

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

leggr ‘leg, hollow bone (of arms and legs)’
(ONP leggr (sb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far leggur, Icel leggur, Norw legg, Dan legg, læg, Sw lägg

OE Cognate

Phonological and morphological markers

[absence of palatalization of */ɡ/] (possibly diagnostic)

Summary category

B2

Attestation

Frequent and widespread from c. 1300 (MED’s earliest citations, other than in surnames, are from the Otho LB, c1300 SLeg.Cuth.(LdMisc 108) and c1300 SLeg.Mich.(LdMisc 108)).

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 575, 2228; Pe 459; WA 772*, 4748, 4959 etc.

Bibliography

MED leg (n.) , OED leg (n.) , HTOED , Dance leggez, Bj. 216, de Vries leggr, Mag. leggur (1), Torp NnEO legg, Falk-Torp leg, Bj-L legg, Hellquist lägg (1), Nielsen læg (1), Kroonen *lagja-