A grim shadow of a broad grin

While working on the post about mean and moan, I decided to write something about groan, but I did not realize how far this word would take me. Gr– is one of the best-known sound-imitative (onomatopoeic) complexes. Greedy animals in fairy tales and disgruntled shopkeepers in novels say gr-gr. They grunt and growl. Grinding and the monster Grendel (from the Old English poem Beowulf) are not “far behind.” All is grist that comes to this mill, even perhaps groin, let alone great. Yet when one looks up groan in an etymological dictionary, one learns with surprise that the answer will appear in the entry grin. We certainly don’t grin when we groan. People seem to have once had the “root” gr-n, which was like a bag into which any vowel might be put for the production of a rather unpredictable sense.

We find the same situation all over the Germanic-speaking world, and exploring the roots of groaning and grinning resolves itself into an almost endless list. This list is not uninteresting, because it probably shows how millennia ago people coined their “first words.” To be sure, we are not witnessing the production of primordial cries, but even a later process is instructive. Old Norse grína meant “to grimace, to distort one’s face in joy or disgust” (note that though by devious ways, grimace has the root grim!). The numerous cognates of grína mean “to snarl; growl, groan.”

And what about grunt? The same story. To be sure, pigs are famous for grunting, but each of us may sometimes give a grunt. Grunt is an old verb. German grunzen, Latin grunnire, and Greek grúzein mean the same. One sees such words in a dictionary and does not give them another thought. Yet this list should cause surprise. If everybody from Old England to Ancient Greece had practically the same sound-imitative verb, how can we account for this phenomenon? Granted, primitive noises make the same impression on people everywhere, but still: almost the same verb, not just gr-gr-gr! It has been a long time since I mentioned Wilhelm Oehl, a Swiss linguist, who once wrote a series of papers about what he called primitive word creation. I find his examples “thought-provoking” (in quotes, because this epithet has been trampled to death: every time I open my computer, someone offers me another thought-provoking story). Similar impulses produce similar reactions (and words) everywhere, but in this case, the uncanny similarity of the form comes as a surprise.

Can such words be borrowed? Is it possible that Latin borrowed the verb from Greek, and the “Germans” borrowed it from Latin? Yes, indeed. In the Romance-speaking world, we find the verbs grigner, grinar, and their likes meaning “to grunt, growl, snarl.” Not only Oehl but also the great German philologist Wilhelm Braune has been mentioned more than once in this blog. He was the author of the main textbooks of Gothic and Old High German and the coeditor of a deservedly famous journal. His given names were Wilhelm Theodor, and, amusingly, he published all his Germanic works under the name Wilhelm and a whole series of etymological papers about the Germanic etymology of Romance words under the name Theodor. Our gr– words belong here: from Germanic to Romance.

Braune (in this case, Theodor) reconstructed the initial meaning of gr-n words as “gnash one’s teeth, crack.” This protomeaning looks realistic. After all, crack begins with kr-, and in the situation that interests us not much difference can be found between gr– and kr-. Braune also offered a detailed essay on the origin of the word grimace, which traveled from Germanic to Romance and back to Germanic. My impression is that Braune’s contributions to etymology have not been noticed. In any case, I never see references to them. I discovered the entire series only in the process of compiling my database for a new etymological dictionary of English. It was clear that Romance periodicals would contain numerous works on Germanic words, but I did not expect to discover a veritable treasure house of etymological musings by someone who is remembered as one of the founders of Germanic comparative grammar. As regards today’s topic, Braune’s essay on grimace deserves special mention, but we have to go on. 

It seems that gr is just a typical onomatopoeic sound complex. However, this complex suddenly begins to offer other possibilities. Gr-gr fills us with fear, and we are ready to add gruesome to our list. Gruesome is a northern word in English, but German grausam “cruel” and the impersonal verb grauen “to fill with horror” show that the word was also known in West Germanic. In its wanderings, it crossed the path of the color name gray/grey. Grimalkin means “cat” (-malkin goes back to a female personal name, originally from Mathilda, but later, typical of lower classes; hence Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders) and is understood as “grey Malkin,” but the sense “frightening, terrible” is behind it. Gray-Malkin is one of many names Shakespeare used for “Devil.” Though the most belligerent cats were also called grey in Old Norse myths, the adjective’s original sense was as in German grausam and English gruesome. This is the way of all things: you grin, and your grin inspires people with awe or fear.

When we grin, the mouth opens and a space is formed. Several words in Scandinavian owe their origin to this situation. One of them is “branch” (compare “a branch of knowledge,” that is, a separate area). Such are Swedish gren and its cognates. A branch separates itself from the trunk! This is how language works. A sound complex is produced, and its message is unmistakable. For instance, gr-gr (noise). Then more abstract senses begin to weave around it (fear, fright). Still later, people remember that to produce a grunt, the mouth should open (grins and grimaces appear), and the lips separate (branches join the crowd). For some reason, at some time, the sound complex goes abroad, and the same words begin to wander from Greece to Germany, and from the Germanic world to France and Italy. To add insult to injury, the word meets its twin (this happened with gray), and more confusion is the result. Grimalkins begin to jump all over the place. I doubt that AI will beat humans at this game. In my opinion, historical linguists, though largely unemployed, will always have something to do. On another note, my home team has just lost the home opener, and I cannot resist the temptation of quoting the title of the newspaper article about this disaster: “Home…Groan.” Most certainly, the editor of the sports section will not read this post.ave an exchange of comments. Exchange, let it be remembered, is the root of societal life, be it the Stock Exchange, suffering, or love.

_{Featured image: Illustration of the Cheshire Cat, a character from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1916) by Arthur Rackham. Public domain via rawpixel.}