n.
'man, fellow'
(Modern English knape)Usually derived from OE cnapa ‘male child, boy; youth, young man; boy employed as a servant; male servant, attendant or retainer (of any age)’ (thus OED, TGD, GDS), cp. OIcel knapi ‘servant boy, valet of a king or great man’, OFris cnapa, MLG knape. Input from the ON n. (or its personal name equivalent Knapi) has also been suggested (e.g. MED) on the basis of the distribution of cnap- forms in place-names in the Danelaw, as opposed to reflexes of OE cnafa in the S (EPNE, followed by VEPN). Smith (EPNE) also draws a semantic distinction since ODan knabe ‘denoted a nobleman of low rank, the equivalent of a dreng’ whereas OE cnapa ‘had a menial significance’, but this is less convincing since the OE n. is also attested in a neutral sense (see DOE sense 1). The requisite antiquity of the ON form is also in doubt: ON knapi is attested no earlier than c. 1250–1300 by ONP and has been explained as a loan from MLG (de Vries and Mag.)
PGmc Ancestor
*knab/ppan-
Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)
knapi ‘servant boy, valet of a king or great man’
(ONP knapi (sb.))
Other Scandinavian Reflexes
Icel knapi, knap(u)r, Norw knape, Sw dial knape
OE Cognate
cnapa ‘male child, boy; youth, young man; boy employed as a servant; male servant, attendant or retainer (of any age)’
Phonological and morphological markers
Summary category
CCC3b
Relatively uncommon in MED: some citations continue OE traditions (c1150(OE) Hrl.HApul.(Hrl 6258B), c1175(?OE) Bod.Hom.(Bod 343)), and then a scattering of others occur throughout ME, showing no evident dial bias. MED’s place-name citations are from Yks. (West Riding), Cmb. and Not., but see further EPNE and VEPN.
Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus
Gaw 2136