tayt

n.

WA taite

'pleasure, sport, play'

(Modern English )

Etymology

Cp. OIcel teiti 'joy, cheerfulness'; alway derived from ON. See further tayt (adj.).

PGmc Ancestor

*taita-

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

teiti 'joy, cheerfulness'
(ONP teiti (sb.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far teiti, Icel teiti

OE Cognate

cp. tāt (adj.)(only as a name element)

Phonological and morphological markers

ON /ei/ < PGmc */ai/

Summary category

A1*c

Attestation

MED's handful of citations of the sb. are exclusively N: otherwise only c1440(?a1400) Perceval (Thrn) and WA. See also tayt (adj.).

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

Cl 889, 935; WA 1208, 3979

The MS reads <tyt> at Cl 935, which Anderson (935n) and Olsen follow Menner in plausibly emending to *tayt, ascribing the error to influence from the phrase as tyt 'at once' (see 935n). This provides a better sense than the MS reading, which requires a hapax legomenon, but in defence of maintaining it, see Vant.

Bibliography

MED tait(e (n.) , OED tait (adj.) , HTOED , Dance tayt, Bj. 50, de Vries teita, Mag. teitur, Heid. taita-, Orel *taitaz, AEW tāt