wynne

v. (st.)

Gaw past sg. wan, pp. wonnen, wonen; Pe past sg. wan, pp. wonne; Cl  past sg. wan, past pl. wonnen, wonen, pp. wonnen, wonen, wunnen; Pat pres. pl. wynnes, past pl. wonnen; WA pres. 3 sg. wynnes, imp. pl. wynnes, past sg. wan, pp. won

‘to get with effort (to), reach (intrans.), attain; come, go; bring’ (Modern English win)

Etymology

For the most part the uses of this v. unambiguously continue those of OE winnan ‘to labour, toil, trouble oneself; resist, oppose, contradict; fight, strive, struggle, rage; endure, bear, suffer; be ill’, next to gewinnan ‘to conquer, obtain, gain’; cp. Go winnan, OIcel vinna, OFris winna, OS, OHG winnan < PGmc *wennan-. But the intrans. use to mean ‘to come, go, get’ (as occurs repeatedly in the Gaw MS) is unparalleled in OE, and has sometimes been explained as a semantic loan from the ON cognate, where a similar sense is attested (thus OED, TGD (followed by Nagano 1966: 65), McGee 356). It may also be explained without ON input (so MED, GDS) as an independent, endogenous development of the senses known for OE winnan, plausibly via an absolute usage of ‘to win, gain (one’s way)’ to a place (or reflex. ‘to win/get oneself to’, as at Gaw 402) > ‘to reach, get to’.

PGmc Ancestor

*wennan-

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

vinna ‘to work, labour, till, cultivate; work, perform; win, gain; conquer, vanquish; avail; withstand; suffer, undergo’; vinna til ‘to reach (to)' (Zoëga sense 11)
(ONP vinna (2) (vb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far vinna, Icel vinna, Norw vinna, Dan vinde, Sw vinna

OE Cognate

winnan ‘to labour, toil, trouble oneself; resist, oppose, contradict; fight, strive, struggle, rage; endure, bear, suffer; be ill'

Phonological and morphological markers

Summary category

CC3ac

Attestation

For the relevant sense, MED records instances from a variety of texts (from LB Clg A.9 onwards), the majority of which are alliterative and/or N and E (though there are some exceptions, inc. Gower and the Winchester Malory). MnE dial usage is esp. Sc. and N (see OED, EDD).

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Gaw 461, 1365, 1537 etc.; Pe 32, 107, 517 etc.; Cl 112, 140, 882 etc.; Pat 106, 237; WA 541, 838, 1384 etc.

Bibliography

MED winnen (v.) (sense 11) , OED win (v.1) (sense 12(a) (intrans.)) , HTOED , EDD win v.1, Dance wynne, de Vries vinna (2), Mag. vinna (2), Seebold wenn-a-, Orel *wennanan, Kroonen *winnan-, AEW winnan