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From some random googling it seems like "swie" could be "silence", but it doesn't seem to be quite that meaning. There may be some religious overtones .
by ajb 8mo ago
From some random googling it seems like "swie" could be "silence", but it doesn't seem to be quite that meaning. There may be some religious overtones .
- thaumasiotes 8mo agoYes, I found https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary/MED44196 https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dicti... , which glosses "swie" as "silence". Here the text says "I swied", so it has to be a verb, but the meaning "be silent" makes sense in the passage. Something to think about in this exercise is that the shortness of the passages adds difficulty. Consider section 1200, where a verb with the root ner is used. It's given so much focus and contextual elaboration that you can easily tell what it means, even though the word is unfamiliar. If you read longer passages of Middle English, this same phenomenon will occur with more words.
- SilasX 8mo agoWiktionary doesn't mention it for either word, but it looks to be cognate with German schweigen, "to be silent": https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schweigen https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/schweigen
- thaumasiotes 8mo agoWell, wiktionary does call them cognates, if you follow the links around. Old English swige < proto-West-Germanic swiga ; German schweigen < proto-West-Germanic swigen < swiga (Following the links around on wiktionary may, in general, lead to self-contradictory results.)
- niwis 8mo agoIn Limburgs, still today: Zwieg!: Shut up, zwiegen: Not saying anything.
- CRConrad 8mo agoI'm almost certain it's the imperative form of a verb, in the grammar of the time apparently "to swien", "to be silent" or "to shut up". "Swie!" from "swien" looks kind of exactly like "Schweige!" from "zu Schweigen" in modern German. Must go back to the same root (closer to "swie" than "schweigen", I'd guess) in Proto-Germanic.