Etymology

Late OE witter, ME witter is almost always derived straightforwardly from ON, cp. OIcel vitr ‘wise’. It is a formation on the commonplace Gmc root wit- as in OE wita ‘wise man’, wittig ‘sagacious’ etc., which is ultimately the zero-grade of the pret.-pres. v. represented by OE witan ‘to know’ (Go witan, OFris wita, OHG wizzan, OIcel vita). No adjectival -r derivatives are otherwise known outside Scandinavia, but the occurrence of an early OE v. witro (glossing ueror, at CorpGl 2 19.84) lends plausibility to the idea of a native adj. in -r, as in other OE deverbal adjectives (see SPS), and casts doubt on the need for ON derivation (thus SPS, Seebold, Orel; see also Dance 2003: 442–3).

PGmc Ancestor

*wit-

Proposed ON Etymon (OIcel representative)

 vitr ‘wise’
(ONP vitr (adj.))

Other Scandinavian Reflexes

Far vitur, Ice vitur, ODan witær, OSw viter, Sw vitter

OE Cognate

cp. witran (v.) 'verare, to speak the truth'; wita (n.) ‘wise man’, witan (v.) ‘to know’

Phonological and morphological markers

Summary category

CC1

Attestation

First attested in late OE (see Hofmann §386, Peters 98, SPS); it is attested in the SWM in early ME (LB, AW), but in the later period it is mainly N/EM.

Occurrences in the Gersum Corpus

WA 629

Bibliography