v. (wk.)
Gaw, Cl infin. nurne, past 3 sg. nurned; Erk infin. nourne, pp. nournet
'to state, speak, address, announce, propose; offer, urge, press'
(Modern English )Regarded by early commentators as obscure, the ME v. is now usually connected with Sw dial. norna, nyrna, nörna ‘to warn a person secretly, by words or gestures’ (thus OED3, MED and TGD, following Torp-Falk 294) formed on a supposed PGmc root *ner- ‘to murmur’. Sundén (1925: 78–81) derives the Sw forms < PGmc *nurnōn (wk. 2) and *nurnjan (wk. 1) (perhaps reflecting an originally wk. 3 verb), and compares (without n-extension) MLG narren, nurren, MHG narren, nerren ‘to murmur, grumble’; OED also supplies (with n-extension) MLG nōrnen ‘to speak to a person secretly, remind’. The broader etymology remains difficult, and the case for ON loan rests largely on distribution and the lack of a native cognate.
PGmc Ancestor
?*ner-
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
(ONP )
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
Sw dial. norna, nyrna, nörna
OE Cognate
Phonological and morphological markers
Summary category
BB2ac
Recorded only in the Gaw manuscript and Erk.
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Gaw 1661, 1669, 1771, etc.; Cl 65, 669, 803; Erk 101, 152, 195
On the sense (with particular reference to 1771) see Davenport 1977, and further Vant 1661n and PS 1669n.