warp

v. (st. or wk.)

Gaw past warp; Pe infin. warpe; Cl past sg. warp, werp, past pl. warpen; Pat past 3 sg. warpped; Erk past 3 sg. warpydWA pp. *warpyd

‘to cast; say, speak, utter; drive, put' (Modern English warp)

Etymology

Apart from ME warpen, the ON v. represented by OIcel varpa ‘to throw, cast’ is the only wk. 2 verbal formation known in Gmc on the a-grade of the root of PGmc *werpan- (cp. the commonplace st. III v. Go waírpan, OE weorpan, ON verpa, OFris werpa, OS werpan, OHG werfan). Some authorities therefore regard ME warpen (which can be st. or wk.) as showing some influence from ON varpa either on its phonology or conjugation, or both (so GDS, and Knigge 74, Kullnick 18, Nagano 1966: 64, and see also Jordan-Crook §§35 Rem. 1, 66 Rem. 3). But the difference between variants of the ME v. spelt <warp-> and those spelt <werp-> (usually regarded as the straightforward reflex of OE weorpan) may be etymologically superficial, and some have maintained the possibility of later ME warpen also deriving directly from OE weorpan via the commonplace late medieval change /ɛr/ > /ar/, a possibility reinforced by the general absence of <warp-> spellings in MED from before the 14c. (except in the AB language, where warpen  developed regularly from OE weorpan (see d’Ardenne 169–70, Jordan-Crook §35 Rem. 1, Dance 2003: 407)).

PGmc Ancestor

*werpan- or *warpan-

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

varpa ‘to throw, cast’
(ONP varpa (2) (vb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far varpa, Icel varpa, Norw varpa

OE Cognate

weorpan 'to throw, cast'

Phonological and morphological markers

Summary category

CC1c

Attestation

Apart from the AB tradition, MED records no instances of <warp-> in the pres. stem before the late 14c. other than once in a1325(c1250) Gen&Ex (Corp-C 444); demonstrably wk. preterites first occur c. 1400 (inc. Pat 356).  These forms are predominantly N and E, as are the majority of examples of werp-, warp- in MED from the later ME period in all forms/conjugations.

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 224, 1423, 2025 etc.; Pe 879; Cl 152, 213, 444; Pat 356; Erk 321; WA *725*

On the sense at Cl 284, see Anderson 283-4n.  TPD introduce warpyd by emendation at WA 725*.

Bibliography

MED werpen (v.) , OED warp (v.) , HTOED , HTOED , EDD warp (v.1 and sb.), Dance warp, Bj. 257, de Vries varp, Mag. varpa (2), Seebold werp-a-