calle

v. (wk.)

Gaw pres. pl. kallen, past/pp. called, calde, past pl. calden; Cl pres. pl. calles, past sg. calde; Pat pres. 3 sg. calleʒ, past 1 sg. calde, past 3 sg. calde, called, pp. called; Erk past 3 sg callid; WA infin. call, pres. 1 sg. call, pres. 2 sg. callis, pres. 3 sg. calls, cals, calles, callis, pres. pl. call, callis, callen, past sg. callid, cald, pp. callyd, pp. callid, calid, cald, caled, callyd

‘to call, shout, cry out (intr.), crave, beg; call, name, summon (tr.)’ (Modern English call)

Etymology

The v. represented by OIcel kalla ‘to call, cry, shout; send for; say; claim; name’ is characteristic of ON, and its cognates in WGmc are much less central to the semantic fields of calling and naming; but cp. OFris kella, MLG, MDu kallen, OHG kallōn and the related MLG kolsen. The root is only attested in PCOE as an agent n. in the compound (Ex 252 hildecalla ‘war herald’, a hapax legomenon). The v. ceallian in Mald 91 is usually explained as a loan of the ON v. (see further Dance 1999 and SPS 55).

PGmc Ancestor

*kall- or *kalz- 

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

kalla ‘to call, cry, shout; send for; say; claim; name’
(ONP kalla (vb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far kalla, Icel kalla, Norw kalla, Dan kalde, Sw kalla

OE Cognate

cp. hildecalla (n.) ‘war herald’

Phonological and morphological markers

Summary category

C1a

(C5)

Attestation

Relatively infrequent in ME before the14c. (not in the AB language except for once in St.Marg), but thereafter common and very widespread.

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 456, 664, 807, etc.; Pe 173, 182, 273, etc.; Cl 8, 162, 258, etc.; Pat 26, 131, 281, etc.; Erk 16; WA 229, 431, 559, etc.

On Gaw 1421 calle of as a hunting term, see Emerson 1922: 388, Wright 1935: 166. At WA 2138, the A MS has the variant reading <cries all> for D MS <callyd þai>.

Bibliography

MED callen (v.) , OED call (v.) , HTOED , HTOED , HTOED , Dance calle, Bj. 214–15, SPS 55, 285, de Vries kalla, Mag. kalla (1), Bj-L. kalle, Orel *kalzōjanan, Kroonen *kalzōjan-, AEW calla; ceallian, DOE ceallian