soþen

v. (pp.)

'boiled'

(Modern English seethe)

Etymology

The str. II PGmc *seuþan- ‘to seethe, boil, etc.’ (cp. OE sēoðan, OIcel sjóða, OFris siātha, MLG sēden, OHG siodan) with pp. *soðan- regularly produces OE pp. soden, ME sod(d)en.  The variant pp. with medial fricative is usually accounted for either by analogy with the present stem (thus OED, MED).  Alternatively, it can be explained by influence from the ON pp. with /ð/, cp. OIcel soðinn (thus Magoun 1928: 81 (who thinks that a native analogical variant with /ð/ would have been attested more frequently had it existed), TGD (followed by Nagano 1966: 64), GDS). 

PGmc Ancestor

*seuþan-

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

sjóða 'to cook (etc.)'
(ONP sjóða (vb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far sjóða, Icel sjóða, Norw sjoda, sjoa, Dan syde, Sw sjuda

OE Cognate

sēoðan 'to seethe, boil'

Phonological and morphological markers

[ON fricative /ð/ < PGmc */ð/] (possibly diagnostic)

Summary category

CCC2

Attestation

MED records a handful of pp. spellings indicating a medial fricative (including variants from PP MSS), next to the much more common variants in <d>.

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 892

Bibliography

MED sēthen (v.1) , OED seethe (v.) , HTOED , Dance soþen, de Vries sjóða, Mag. sjóða, Bj-L. syde, Seebold seuþ-a-, Orel *seuþanan, Kroonen *seuþan-, AEW sēoðan