Publications dealing with the medieval period are organized by language of the material studied. A more general section, dealing with early modern and modern western European texts, follows. Then are brief etymologies of the (mostly) English words discussed in the purely lexical studies, the titles of books translated, and book reviews. Last is a strictly chronological listing of peer-reviewed articles, some 470 items in all. No polar bears were injured in the composition of this page.
The detailed organization of the bibliography is as follows:
MEDIEVAL LATIN
BALTIC STUDIES
BASQUE STUDIES
ROMANI STUDIES
CANADIAN STUDIES
ROMANCE
French, Anglo-French
French, Anglo-French, and Celtic
Anglo-French and English
Anglo-French and Irish
Anglo-French and Norse
Italian
Spanish
Catalan
Romanian
CELTIC
Gaulish
Old British
Welsh
Cornish
Irish
Irish and Norse
GERMANIC
Germanic
Norse
Egill Skallagrímsson
Old and Middle English, Scots
PRE-MODERN AND MODERN
JAMES JOYCE
WORK IN PROGRESS
ETYMOLOGIES
FRAUGHT WORDS
OTHER SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATIONS
TRANSLATIONS
BOOK REVIEWS
CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING
MEDIEVAL LATIN
The Etymology of Late Latin malina ‘spring tide’ and ledo ‘neap tide.’ Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 40 (2005): 35-43.
Celtic Kingship Motifs Associated with Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. CSANA Yearbook 10. Proceedings of the Celtic Studies Association of North America. Ed. Morgan Davies. Hamilton, NY: Colgate University Press, 2011. Pp. 116-134.
Irish Affinities of De tonitruis, a Treatise on Prognostication by Thunder. Eolas 10 (2017): 2-15.
The Names of Gawain in Medieval Arthurian Tradition. Neophilologus (2019). Web.
BALTIC STUDIES
Weather Gods, Syncretism and the Eastern Baltic. Temenos: Studies in Comparative Religion 26 (1990): 105-114.
Scapulimancy in the Medieval Baltic. Journal of Baltic Studies 23 (1992): 57-62.
A Glimpse of Medieval Curonian Vernacular Architecture in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Journal of Baltic Studies 44.3 (2013): 363-374.
Cosmic Egg and Infant Demiurge: Antecedents of Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden (Blood Meridian). ANQ (May, 2023).
BASQUE STUDIES
Some Fishy Etymologies: Eng. cod, Norse þorskr, Sp. bacalao, Du. kabeljauw. NOWELE 41 (2002): 17-30.
The Etymology of Iroquois: ‘Killer People’ in a Basque-Algonquian Pidgin or an Echo of Norse Irland it mikla ‘Greater Ireland’? Onomastica Canadiana 88 (2006): 43-56. The article was incorporated in lecture form in Timothy J. Anderson’s one-act play The Etymology of Iroquois, premiered in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in 2008.
“Ils appellent le soleil Iesus”: Linguistic Interaction among Montagnais, Basques, and Jesuits in New France. Onomastica Canadiana 89 (2007): 53-63.
Mackerel and penguin: International Words of the North Atlantic. NOWELE 56 (2009): 41-52.
Capstan, winch and windlass, haul, hoist and tow. Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 465-473.
Etymologies of Canuck. Onomastica Canadiana 95 (2016): 75-84.
ROMANI STUDIES
Spanish flamenco: Origin, Loan Translation, and In- and Out-Group Evolution (Romani, Caló, Castilian). Romance Notes 48 (2007): 13-22.
Mexican mano and vato: Romani and Caló Origins. Journal of Latino and Latin-American Studies 3 (2008): 94-103.
An Unnoticed Early Attestation of gringo: Implications for its Origin. Bulletin of Spanish Studies 86 (2009): 323-330.
Identity Politics, Lexicography, and the Etymology of tango–una vez más. Romance Notes 53: 2 (2013): 155-164.
Mexican Slang ese “dude, buddy” and its Iberian Caló-Romani Antecedents. Studia Linguistica Universitatis IagellonicaeCracoviensis 138 (2021): 135-143.
Pícaro and germanía: Sources in Caló (Andalusian Para-Romani) (under review).
CANADIAN STUDIES
Vinland, the Irish: “Obvious Fictions and Apocrypha”. Skandinavistik 23 (1993): 1-15.
The Arctic Desert (Helluland) in Bárðar saga. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 7 (1994): 1-24.
Psychological Warfare in Vinland (Eiríks saga rauða). In Papers in Honor of Jaan Puhvel. 2 vols. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series 20-21. Washington: Institute for the Study of Man 1997. Vol. 2. Studies in Indo-European Mythology and Religion. Eds Edgar C. Polomé and John Greppin. Pp. 235-64.
Some Fishy Etymologies: Eng. cod, Norse þorskr, Sp. bacalao, Du. kabeljauw. NOWELE 41 (2002): 17-30.
Karlsefni’s húsasnotra: The Divestment of Vinland. Scandinavian Studies 75.3 (2003): 341-50.
The Etymology of Iroquois: ‘Killer People’ in a Basque-Algonquian Pidgin or an Echo of Norse Irland it mikla ‘Greater Ireland’? Onomastica Canadiana 88 (2006): 43-56.
“Ils appellent le soleil Iesus”: Linguistic Interaction among Montagnais, Basques, and Jesuits in New France. Onomastica Canadiana 89 (2007): 53-63.
Mackerel and penguin: International Words of the North Atlantic. NOWELE 56 (2009): 41-52.
Flake (‘drying rack’), inOddments: A Miscellany of English Etymologies Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae, Part I, 136.1 (2019, ): 9-23, Part II, 136,2 (2019): 83-97, Part III, 136.3 (2019): 181-198.
Rigging Norse Ships in Vinland, ca. 1000 AD: The Halyard Block. The Northern Mariner 33.3.4 (2023): 369-382.
What do women want?’ Chaucer’s Concept of Female Sovereignty in Atwood’s The Edible Woman. The Margaret Atwood Studies Journal (forthcoming).
ROMANCE
French, Anglo-French
The Beginnings and Early Development of Old French Historiography. Doctoral dissertation. The University of California at Berkeley, 1966; Dissertation Abstracts 27 (1967): 3850A-B.
Governal ert en un esqoi: A Note on Béroul’s Roman de Tristan. Romance Quarterly 44 (1997): 195-199.
Ancien judéo-français étupé ‘ayant un prépuce, incirconcis’: glose biblique – et insulte religieuse? Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 115 (1999): 234-243.
Some Problems of Technical Vocabulary in the Tristan Corpus: Archery (Béroul), Seafaring (Thomas). Tristania 22 (2003): 1-22.
Naval Architecture in Marie de France’s Guigemar. Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 54 (2004): 379-391.
Arthur’s Embarkation for Gaul in a Fresh Translation of Wace’s Roman de Brut. Romance Notes 46 (2006): 143-156.
A Critical Appraisal of Sailing Scenes in New Editions of Le Conte de Floire et Blancheflor, La Vie de Saint Gilles, le Roman de Tristan and the Folies Tristan. Nottingham French Studies 45 (2006): 86-103.
Illusion and Anticlericalism in a Scene from Le Conte de Floire et Blanchefleur. Neophilologus 90 (2006): 209-214.
Naval Tactics at Battle of Zierikzee (1304) in the Light of Mediterranean Praxis. Journal of Medieval Military History 4 (2006): 74-90.
“Rollant ferit en une perre bise”: Of Stones, Bread, and Birches. Journal of Indo-European Studies 34 (2006): 363-380.
Norse Horses in Chrétien de Troyes. Romania 125 (2007): 132-47.
The Splash to the Thigh of Yseut aux blanches mains (Thomas, Tristan): Rereading the Emotions. Dalhousie French Studies 88 (2009): 3-10.
Villard de Honnecourt on the Counterweight Trebuchet. AVISTA Forum Journal 19:1-2 (2009): 46-48.
Anglo-Norman beiter in the Medieval Nautical Vocabulary. Romance Notes 50 (2010): 265-269.
The Early Symbolism of Tarring and Feathering. The Mariner’s Mirror 96:3 (2010): 317-319.
Zierikzee (Naval Battle of). In Medieval Warfare and Military Technology: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Clifford Rogers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. III.467-468.
The Maritime and Nautical Vocabulary of Le Voyage de saint Brendan. Neophilologus 97 (2013): 9-19. French, Anglo-Norman, and Celtic
Bisclavret in Marie de France: A Reply. Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 4 (1982): 77-82.
The Jongleur Taillefer at Hastings: Antecedents and Literary Fate. Viator 14 (1983): 77-88.
La Joie de la Cort (Érec et Énide), Mabon, and Early Irish síd [‘peace; Otherworld’]. Arthuriana 17 (2007): 10-27.
Kay the Seneschal, Tester of Men: The Evolution from Archaic Function to Medieval Character. Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 59 (2007): 375-401.
Extraordinary Beings in Chrétien de Troyes and their Celtic Analogs. Archaeology and Language: Indo-European Studies Presented to James P. Mallory. Eds Karlene Jones-Bley, Martin Huld, and Dean Miller. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph 60. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man, 2012, 23-54.
Survivals of Gaulish in French: buta ‘hut, dwelling place’. French Studies Bulletin 34 (2013): 1-3.
Tracing Pre-Roman Gaul in Medieval French and British Cuisine. Published in the editor’s ‘Preliminaries’ as ‘Frumente’ (leg. ‘Frumenty’). Petits Propos Culinaires 97 (2013): 13-17.
Culinary Terminology in the Lay of Haveloc: Getting It Wrong. Petits Propos Culinaires 112 (2018): 28-32.
Food, Drink, and Table Manners in the Bayeux Tapestry. Petits Propos Culinaires 111 (2018): 18-21.
The Names of Gawain in Medieval Arthurian Tradition. Neophilologus (2019). Web.
Anglo-French and Middle English
In Troubled Etymological Waters: rade in Middle English, Anglo-Norman, French, and Beyond. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 105 (2004): 357-362.
Anglo-Norman and Middle English Terminology for Spindle Whorls. ANQ 21 (2008): 7-11.
At Fours and Fives: Carfax and Quincunx. Notes and Queries 55 (2008): 131-134.
The Origin and Early History of furl. The Nautical Research Journal 53 (2008): 31-34.
Pest: Interaction in English and Scots. Notes and Queries 55:4 (2008): 406-408.
Walking Home from the Fish-Pond: Local Allusion in Walter of Bibbesworth’s 13 c. Treatise for English Housewives. Kent Archaeological Society Online Research. 2008, web.
Animal Vocalization, Human Polyglossia in Walter of Bibbesworth’s Domestic Treatise in Anglo-Norman French and Middle English. Sign Systems Studies 37: 3-4 (2009): 173-187.
Bastard and basket: The Etymologies Reviewed. Leeds Studies in English 39 (2009): 117-125.
Brewing Ale in Walter of Bibbesworth’s 13 c. French Treatise for English Housewives. Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 14 (2009): 255-266.
An Early Set of Bee-Keeping Words in Anglo-Norman French and Middle English. ANQ 22:2 (2009): 8-13.
The Etymology and Early History of ceiling. Notes and Queries 56: 4 (2009): 496-499.
The Genealogy of Haggis. Miscelénea 39 (2009): 103-110.
Groin ‘Snout’ and ‘Crease at the Thigh and Abdomen’: Etymologies, Homonymity, Resolution. SELIM 16 (2009): 151-158.
Learning French in a Late Thirteenth-Century English Bake-House. Petits Propos Culinaires 88 (2009): 35-53.
Names for the Badger in Multilingual Medieval Britain. ANQ 22: 4 (2009): 1-8.
‘Now the French for the properties of a plow’: Agrarian Lexis in French and English in Late 13 c. Britain. AVISTA Forum Journal 19:1-2 (2009): 21-27.
Scullions, cook’s knaves, and drudges. Notes and Queries 56: 4 (2009): 499-502.
Speculations on the Etymology of gun. Indo-European Studies Bulletin 13: 2 (2009): 17-20.
Trusty Trout, Humble Trout, Old Trout: A Curious Kettle. The Nordic Journal of English Studies 8:3 (2009): 191-201.
Chough: Phonological and Semantic Development. Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 169-172.
Chowder: Origin and Early History of the Name. Petits Propos Culinaires 91 (2010): 88-93.
Court-bouillon: An Early Attestation in Anglo-Norman French? Petits Propos Culinaires 89 (2010): 77-83.
The Etymology of askance. Notes and Queries 57: 3 (2010): 334-336.
Flax and Linen in Walter of Bibbesworth’s 13 c. French Treatise for English Housewives. Medieval Clothing and Textiles 6 (2010): 111-126.
Germanic gabben, Old French gaber, English gab: Heroic Mockery and Self-Promotion. SELIM 17 (2010): 79-90.
The Lexis of Wooden House Construction in Bilingual Medieval Britain. Vernacular Architecture 41 (2010): 52-59.
The Name of the Siege Engine Trebuchet: Etymology and History in Medieval France and Britain. Journal of Medieval Military History 8 (2010): 189-196.
Out of kelter, helter-skelter. Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 179-181.
A Popular View of Sexually Transmitted Disease in Late Thirteenth-Century Britain. Mediaevistik 23 (2010): 186-196.
The Terminology for a Late Thirteenth-Century Farm Cart in French and English. AVISTA Forum Journal 20 (2010): 35-42.
Three Anglo-Norman Etymologies: Booze, Gear, and Gin. Notes and Queries 57.4 (2010): 461-465.
‘To set one’s cap at someone’: Head-Gear or Ship’s Head? Notes and Queries 57: 3 (2010): 336-337.
Ahoy! and Jury-rigging: Etymologies. Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 188-191.
The Early History of Some Traditional English Names for Pork Products. Petits Propos Culinaires 98 (2013): 78-88.
More Buns. Petits Propos Culinaires 100 (2014): 126-131.
Medieval Anglo-French and English Names for the Osprey. Tradition Today 6 (2017): 69-73.
The Counterweight Trebuchet, the History of its Name in Medieval France and Britain, and Villard de Honnecourt on the Terminology of its Components. In The World of Villard de Honnecourt: the Portfolio, Medieval Technology, and Gothic Monuments, eds. George Brooks and Maile Hutterer, Leiden: Brill, December, 2022, 89-104.
Anglo-French and Irish
The Patronage of La Conquête d’Irlande. [The Song of Dermot] Romance Philology 21 (1967): 34-41.
`Go West, Young Man’: An Anglo-Norman Chronicle in 13th Century Ireland. Florilegium 6 (1984): 119-136.
Anglo-Norman Verse on New Ross and its Founder. Irish Historical Studies 28 (1992): 113-123.
Marie de France’s Chievrefoil, Hazel Rods, and the Ogam Letters Coll and Uillenn. Arthuriana 14 (2004): 3-16.
Avian Wild Men: Merlin in his Mew, Tristan as Picou. Mediaevalia 29 (2008): 53-73.
An Archaic Tale-Type Determinant of Chrétien’s Fisher King and Grail. Arthuriana 22.2 (2012): 85-101.
Anglo-French and Norse
Rummaret de Wenelande: A Geographic Note to Wace’s Brut.Romance Philology 18 (1964): 46-53.
Ships and Sailors in Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis. Modern Language Review 98 (2003): 299-310.
Lexical Evidence for Medieval Trade in Precious Materials: Old French rohal, Middle English roel `walrus (and narwhal?) ivory’. NOWELE 43 (2004): 101-119.
Twelfth-Century Norman and Irish Textual Evidence for Ship-Building and Sea-Faring Techniques of Scandinavian Origin. The Heroic Age 8 (2005), web.
Le Far de Meschines – The Strait of Messina: Origin of the Toponymical Term. Journal of Romance Studies 8 (2008): 9-20.
The Etymology of rivet. Notes and Queries 59 (2012): 488-490.
Three Verbs in a Boat: Conflation in Anglo-French and its Lexicography. Neophilologus 97.3 (2013): 459-463.
The Names of the Legendary Hero Haveloc the Dane. French Studies Bulletin 40.149 (2019): 1-5.
Italian
Dante’s Venetian Shipyard Scene (Inf. 21), Barratry, and Maritime Law. Quaderni d’Italianistica 22 (2001): 57-79.
Sea-changes in the Roman de Tristan of Thomas and Dante’s bufera infernal (Inferno 5). Romance Quarterly 51 (2004): 67-71.
“Or da poggia, or da orza” (Purg. 32): Nautical Deixis in Dante’s Commedia. The Romanic Review 96 (2005): 67-84.
Spanish
Swagger and Sashay: An Etymology for Sp. majo/maja. Romance Notes 44 (2004): 293-298.
Spanish flamenco: Origin, Loan Translation, and In- and Out-Group Evolution (Romani, Caló, Castilian). Romance Notes 48 (2007): 13-22.
Mexican mano and vato: Romani and Caló Origins. Journal of Latino and Latin-American Studies 3 (2008): 94-103.
An Unnoticed Early Attestation of gringo: Implications for its Origin. Bulletin of Spanish Studies 86 (2009): 323-330.
Identity Politics, Lexicography, and the Etymology of tango–una vez más. Romance Notes 53: 2 (2013): 155-164.
Mexican Slang ese “dude, buddy” and its Iberian Caló-Romani Antecedents. Studia Linguistica Universitatis IagellonicaeCracoviensis 138 (2021): 135-143.
Pícaro and germanía: Sources in Caló (Andalusian Para-Romani) (under review).
Catalan
The Lexicon of Naval Tactics in Muntaner’s Crónica. The Catalan Review 17 (2003): 177-91. Reprinted in Medieval Ships and Warfare, ed. Susan Rose, The International Library of Essays in Military History, ed. Jeremy Black. London: Ashgate, 2008. Pp. 387-402.
The Use of Quicklime in Medieval Naval Warfare. The Mariner’s Mirror 92 (2006): 262-269.
Romanian
Emil Cioran, Îndreptar Pătimaş (The Passionate Handbook), excerpts. Inventory: The Princeton Journal of Translation 4 (November, 2013).
Emil Cioran, Amurgul gîndurilor (The Twlight of Thoughts), Part I, English translation and commentary. Delos (forthcoming).
CELTIC
Gaulish
Sails in the North: Further Linguistic Considerations. The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 33 (2004): 348-350.
Survivals of Gaulish in French: buta ‘hut, dwelling place’. French Studies Bulletin 34 (2013): 1-3.
Tracing Pre-Roman Gaul in Medieval French and British Cuisine. Published in the editor’s ‘Preliminaries’ as ‘Frumente’ (leg. ‘Frumenty’). Petits Propos Culinaires 97 (2013): 13-17.
Old British
The Etymology of English toad: Effects of the Celtic Substrate? Tradition Today 7 (2018): 68-73.
The Etymology of English boy.ANQ.
The Etymology of English hog.ANQ (October, 2018).
The Etymology of Old English bædling ‘sodomite’ and the Early History of English bad. ANQ (February, 2019).
The Names of Gawain in Medieval Arthurian Tradition. Neophilologus (2019). Web.
The Etymology of English earwig. Tradition Today 9 (2020): 43-46.
Welsh
Kay the Seneschal, Tester of Men: The Evolution from Archaic Function to Medieval Character. Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 59 (2007): 375-401.
Teithi Hen, Gúaire mac Áedáin, Grettir Ásmundarson: The King’s Debility, the Shore, the Blade. Studia Celtica 41 (2007): 161-169.
The Names of Gawain in Medieval Arthurian Tradition. Neophilologus (2019). Web.
The Etymology of English earwig. Tradition Today 9 (2020): 43-46.
A Couplet on King Penda of Mercia in the Old Welsh Englynion y Beddau (Stanzas of the Graves). Old English Newsletter 47.2 (July, 2024).
The Grieving Land: Echrys Ynys from The Book of Taliesin (under review).
Cornish
Piskie/pixie, in: Some Disputed Etymologies. Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 172-1179.
Irish
Three Charioteering Gifts in Mesca Ulad and Táin Bó Cúalnge: immorchor ndelend, foscul ndirich, léim dar boilg. Ériu 32 (1981): 163-167.
Conall’s Welcome to Cet in Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó. Florilegium 4 (1982): 100-108.
Martial Feats in the Old Irish Ulster Cycle. Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 9 (1983): 45-80.
Old Irish Fert, `Tie-pole’, Fertas `Swingletree’, and the Seeress Fedelm. Études Celtiques 21 (1984): 171-183.
Fergus and the Cosmogonic Sword. History of Religions 25 (1985): 30-56.
The Mythology of Loch Neagh. Mankind Quarterly 26 (1985): 111-135.
The Smith and the Hero: Culann and Cú Chulainn. Mankind Quarterly 25 (1985): 227-260.
Bargaining for the Life of Bres in Cath Maige Tuired. Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 34 (1986): 26-40.
Mani Maidi an Nem … : Ringing Changes on a Cosmic Motif. Ériu 37 (1986): 99-117.
The Bound and the Binding: The Lyre in Early Ireland. In Proceedings of the First North American Congress of Celtic Studies, 1986. Ed. Gordon W. MacLennan. Ottawa: Chair of Celtic Studies, University of Ottawa, 1988. Pp. 365-385.
Cerrce, an Archaic Epithet of the Dagda, Cernnunos, and Conall Cernach. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 16 (1988): 341-364.
Irish Evidence for the De Harmonia Tonorum of Wulfstan of Winchester. Mediaevalia 14 (1988): 23-38.
Ludarius: Slang and Symbol in the Life of St. Máedóc of Ferns. Studia Monastica 30 (1988): 291-304.
Warrior Initiation and Some Short Celtic Spears in the Irish and Learned Latin Traditions. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 11 (1989): 87-108.
A Cut Above: Ration and Station in an Irish King’s Hall. Food and Foodways 4 (1990): 89-110.
Images of Enchainment in the Hisperica Famina and Vernacular Irish Texts. Études Celtiques 27 (1990): 221-234.
The Motif of Wrestling in Early Irish and Mongolian Epic. Mongolian Studies 13 (1990): 153-168.
Sports Injuries and the Law in Early Ireland. Ludi Medi Ævi 2 (1990): 4-5.
Cú Chulainn, the Heroic Imposition of Meaning on Signs, and the Revenge of the Sign. Incognita: International Journal for Cognitive Studies in the Humanities 2 (1991): 79-105.
Early Irish Attitudes Towards Hair and Beards, Baldness and Tonsure. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 44 (1991): 154-189.
Textual Notes on Descriptions of the Old Irish Chariot and Team. Studia Celtica Japonica 4 (1991): 15-35.
Concepts of Eloquence in Tochmarc Emire. Studia Celtica 26/27 (1991-92): 125-154.
The Deficient Ruler as Avian Exile: Nebuchadnezzar and Suibhne Geilt. Ériu 43 (1992): 217-122.
Games, Sport and Para-Military Exercise in Early Ireland. Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature 10 (1992): 105-123.
Guin agus Crochad agus Gólad: The Earliest Irish Threefold Death. In Celtic Languages and Celtic Peoples: Proceedings of the Second North American Congress of Celtic Studies, Halifax, 1989. Eds Cyril Byrne, Margaret Harry and Pádraig Ó Siadhail. Halifax: D’Arcy McGee Chair of Irish Studies, St. Mary’s University, 1992. Pp. 65-82.
Charting Conceptual Space: Dumézil’s Tripartition and the Fatal Hostel in Early Irish Literature. Mankind Quarterly 34 (1993): 27-64.
Conventional Descriptions of the Horse in the Ulster Cycle. Études Celtiques 30 (1994): 233-249.
Diet and Fantasy in Eleventh-Century Ireland: The Vision of Mac Con Glinne. Food and Foodways 6 (1994): 1-17.
Homeric Echoes in Táin Bó Cúailnge? Emania 14 (1996): 65-73.
Tripartition in the Early Irish Tradition: Cosmic or Social Structure? In Indo-European Religion after Dumézil. Ed. Edgar C. Polomé. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series 16. Washington: Institute for the Study of Man, 1996. Pp. 156-183.
Contracting for Combat: Flyting and Fighting in Táin Bó Cúailnge. Emania 16 (1997): 49-62.
Kingship and the Hero’s Flaw: Disfigurement as Ideological Vehicle in Early Irish Narrative. Disability Studies Quarterly 17 (1997): 263-267.
Róimid Rígóinmit, Royal Fool: Onomastics and Cultural Valence. Journal of Indo-European Studies 33 (2005): 41-51.
Portraits of the Ulster Hero Conall Cernach: A Case for Waardenburg’s Syndrome? Emania 20 (2006): 75-80.
Medieval Irish Language and Literature: An Orientation for Arthurians. Arthuriana 17 (2007): 70-80.
Deficient Royal Rule: The King’s Proxies, Judges and the Instruments of his Fate. In Essays on the Early Irish King Tales: Rígscéla Érenn. Ed. Daniel M. Wiley. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008. Pp. 104-126.
Fusion and Fission in the Love and Lexis of Early Ireland. In Words of Love and Love of Words in the Middle Ages. Ed. Albrecht Classen. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008. Pp. 95-109.
Irish Studies. In Handbook of Medieval Studies: Concepts, Methods, Historical Developments, and Current Trends in Medieval Studies. Ed. Albrecht Classen. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2010. Pp. 727-738.
Netherworld and Otherworld in Early Irish Literature. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 59 (2012): 201-230.
Pre-Christian Cosmogonic Lore in Medieval Ireland: The Exile into Royal Poetics. Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 14 (2012): 109-126.
Review article, Celtic Studies in North America: Recent Essay Collections, appearing as: Joseph Falaky Nagy (ed), Identifying the ‘Celtic’; Joseph Falaky Nagy (ed), Myth in Celtic literatures; Joseph F. Eska (ed), Law, literature and society: Christina Chance, Aled Llion Jones, Matthieu Boyd, Edyta Lehmann-Shriver & Sarah Zeiser (ed), Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 26–27. Peritia – Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland 22-23 (2011-2012): 387-401.
Extraordinary Weapons, Heroic Ethics, and Royal Justice in Early Irish Literature. Preternature 2.1 (2013): 1-18.
‘Finn and the man in the tree’ Revisited. e-Keltoi 8.2 (April 2013), 37-55, web.
Proinsias Mac Cana, The Cult of the Sacred Centre. Review article. Studia Hibernica 39 (2013): 155-170.
Fantastic Technology in Early Irish Literature. Études Celtiques 40 (2014): 85-98.
Qualitative and Quantitative Criteria for Prosperous Royal Rule: Notes on Audacht Morainn and a Vedic Indian Analogue. Studia Celtica 48 (2014): 93-106.
The Laconic Scar in Early Irish Literature. In ‘His brest tobrosten’: Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture, Kelly de Vries and Larissa Tracy, eds. Leiden: Brill, 2015. 473-495.
Malting in Early Ireland, Revisited. Petits Propos Culinaires 102 (2015): 11-13.
Mesocosms and the Organization of Interior Space in Early Ireland. Traditio 70 (2015): 75-110.
Rincne quasi quinque (Sanas Cormaic): Quantification, Simile, and Word-Play. Eolas 8 (2015): 2-11.
Interpreting Narrative/Textual Difficulties in Bruiden Da Choca: Some Suggestions. Éigse 39 (2016): 160-175.
Bricriu nemthenga (‘poison-tongue’): Onomastics and Social Function in Early Irish Literature. Mediaevistik 30 (2017): 87-102.
Cath Finntrágha (The Battle of Ventry), excerpt. Inventory: The Princeton Journal of Translation 7 (2017).
Irish Affinities of De tonitruis, a Treatise on Prognostication by Thunder Eolas 10 (2017): 2-15.
No Skin in the Game: Flaying and Early Irish Law and Epic. In Flaying in the Premodern World: Practice and Representation, ed. Larissa Tracy. Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2017, 261-284.
Irish Diet in the Eleventh Century as Reflected in the Satire of Aislinge Meic Con Glinne.Irish Food History: A Companion, edited by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman. Dublin: Technological University Dublin, 2023.
The Prull Entry in Sanas Cormaic: Verse-Capping as a Vehicle for Censure. Éigse 42 (2024): 250-258 (forthcoming).
Irish and Norse
The Old Irish Bóand/Nechtan Myth in the Light of Scandinavian Evidence. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 1 (1983): 63-78.
Gilbogus in Manx Latin: Celtic or Norse Origin? Celtica 17 (1985): 29-32.
Konungs skuggsjá: Irish Marvels and the King’s Justice. Scandinavian Studies 57 (1985): 147-161.
An Irish Perspective on Ibn Fadlan’s Description of Rus Funeral Ceremonial. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 16 (1988): 173-181.
Kjartan’s Choice: The Irish Disconnection in the Sagas of the Icelanders. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 3 (1988): 89-114.
Portraits of the Ruler: Óláfr pái Hõskuldsson and Cormac mac Airt. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 17 (1989): 77-97.
An Irish Descriptive Topos in Laxdæla Saga. Scripta Islandica 41 (1990): 18-34.
The Three Wounds: Tripartition as Narrrative Tool in Ireland and Iceland. Incognita: International Journal for Cognitive Studies in the Humanities 1 (1990): 50-90.
Úath mac Imomain (Fled Bricrend), Óðinn, and Why the Green Knight is Green. Mankind Quarterly 30 (1990): 307-316.
Women’s Work and Words: Setting the Stage for Strife in Medieval Irish and Icelandic Narrative. Mankind Quarterly 31 (1990): 59-86.
Airdrech, Sirite and Other Early Irish Battlefield Spirits. Éigse 25 (1991): 45-55.
Clontarf, and the Irish Destinies of Earl Sigurðr of Orkney and Þorsteinn Síðu-Hallsson. Scandinavian Studies 63 (1991): 164-186.
Serial Defamation in Two Medieval Tales: Icelandic Ölkofra þáttr and Irish Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó. Oral Tradition 6 (1991): 35-57.
Bragi Boddason, the First Skald, and the Problem of Celtic Origins. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 5 (1992): 1-18.
Soundboxes of the Divine: Hœnir, Sencha, Gwalchmai. Mankind Quarterly 33 (1992): 57-67.
Irish Perspectives on Heimdallr. Alvíssmál 2 (1993): 3-30.
Spiritual Navigation in the Western Sea: Sturlunga saga and Adomnán’s Hinba. Scripta Islandica 44 (1993): 30-42.
Vinland, the Irish, “Obvious Fictions and Apocrypha.” Skandinavistik 23 (1993): 1-15.
Deployment of an Irish Loan: ON verða at gjalti `to go mad with terror’. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 93 (1994): 151-176.
Management of the Celtic Fact in Landnámabók. Scandinavian Studies 66 (1994): 1-25.
The Etymology and Semantics of Old Norse knörr `cargo ship’: The Irish and English Evidence. Scandinavian Studies 68 (1996): 279-290.
Gunnarr, his Irish Wolfhound Sámr, and the Passing of the Old Heroic Order in Njáls saga. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 112 (1997): 43-66.
Hostellers in Landnámabók: A Trial Irish Institution? Skáldskaparmál 4 (1997): 162-178.
The Nickname of Björn buna and the Celtic Interlude in the Settlement of Iceland. Ainm 7 (1996-97): 51-66.
Old Norse Nautical Terminology in the “Sea-Runs” of Middle Irish Narrative. Studia Celtologica Upsaliensia 4 (2001): 29-63.
A Swedish Traveler’s Reception on an Irish Stage Set: Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning. Keltische Forschungen 3 (2008): 201-220.
Þórgunna of Eyrbyggja saga and the Rejection of Christian Celtic Models of Rule. Scotia 33 (2009): 13-24.
Birds and Brains of Forgetfulness: Old Norse óminnis hegri, Old Irish inchinn dermait. Journal of Indo-European Studies 43.3-4 (2015): 393-422.
A Hiberno-Norse Etymology for English fetch ‘apparition of a living person’. ANQ 30 (2017): 205-209.
Shetland: An Ecological Etymology. The New Shetlander 300 (May, 2023): 41-42.
Óláfr pái Hǫskuldsson’s Landing in Ireland (Laxdæla saga) in Light of the Irish Law of the Shore. NOWELE 77.1 (2024): 1-13.
The Afterlife of Legendary Irish Kings and Sovereignty Figures in Medieval Icelandic Literature. Celtic Mythology, ed. Patrice Lajoie and Guillaume Oudaer (under review).
GERMANIC
German
Scapulimancy in the Medieval Baltic. Journal of Baltic Studies 23 (1992): 57-62.
Breaking the Deer and Breaking the Rules in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan. Oxford German Studies 32 (2003): 1-52.
Celtic Echoes and the Timing of Tristan’s First Arrival in Cornwall (Gottfried von Strassburg). Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 108 (2007): 743-750.
Distortions of the Hero: Felix Krull and Cú Chulainn. Oxford German Studies 47:2 (2018): 201-210.
Runic alu and laukaz on Objects of the Germanic Migration Period: Perspectives from the Edda. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 80 (4) (2020): 401-410.
Norse
Weather Gods, Syncretism and the Eastern Baltic. Temenos: Studies in Comparative Religion 26 (1990): 105-114.
Sexual Identity, Cultural Integrity, Verbal and Other Magic in Some Episodes of Laxdæla saga and Kormáks saga. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 107 (1992): 131-155.
A Scurrilous Episode in Landnámabók: Tjörvi the Mocker. Maal og Minne (1993): 127-148.
Steingerðr’s Nicknames for Bersi (Kormáks saga): Implications for Gender, Politics and Poetics. Florilegium 12 (1993): 33-54.
The Arctic Desert (Helluland) in Bárðar saga. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 7 (1994): 1-24.
Njáll’s Beard, Hallgerðr’s Hair and Gunnarr’s Hay: Homological Patterning in Njáls saga. TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek 15 (1994): 5-31.
The Honor of Guðlaugr Snorrason and Einarr þambarskelfir: A Reply. Scandinavian Studies 67 (1995): 536-544.
Poetry and Social Agency in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Scripta Islandica 46 (1995): 29-62.
Power, Magic and Sex: Queen Gunnhildr and the Icelanders. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 8 (1995): 57-77.
Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders. In Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Pp. 242-263.
Principled Women, Pressured Men: Nostalgia in Fljótsdœla saga. Reading Medieval Studies 22 (1996): 21-62.
Unique Nicknames in Landnámabók and the Sagas of the Icelanders: The Case of Þorleifr kimbi Þorbrandsson. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 9 (1996): 48-71.
From Crown to Toe: Working the Wheel of Fortune in Medieval Scandinavia. Arachne 4 (1997): 123-159.
Psychological Warfare in Vinland (Eiríks saga rauða). In Papers in Honor of Jaan Puhvel. 2 vols. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series 20-21. Washington: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997. Vol. 2. Studies in Indo-European Mythology and Religion. Eds Edgar C. Polomé and John Greppin. Pp. 235-264.
Sexual Defamation in Medieval Iceland: gera meri ór einum `to make a mare of someone.’ NOWELE 30 (1997): 27-37.
The Ship heiti in Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál. Scripta Islandica 49 (1998): 45-86.
Blæju þöll – Young Fir of the Bed-Clothes: Skaldic Seduction. In Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Eds Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie. Newark: University of Delaware Press, and London: Associated University Presses: 1999. Pp. 31-49, 201-206.
Scarfing the Yard with Words: A Note on Fostbrœðra saga. Scandinavian Studies 74 (2002): 1-18.
Danish Maids and Anchor-Rings in a Skaldic Stanza from the Saga of Haraldr harðráði. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 31 (2003): 1-13.
Fracture and Containment in the Icelandic Skalds’ Sagas. Medieval Forum 3 (2003), web.
Gender Ambiguity in Late Medieval Iceland: Legal Framework and Saga Dynamics. Scandinavian Canadian Studies 14 (2002-2003): 1-27.
Karlsefni’s húsasnotra: The Divestment of Vinland. Scandinavian Studies 75:3 (2003): 341-350.
Onomastic Paronomasia in Old Norse: Technique, Context, and Parallels. Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek 27 (2006): 91-127.
The Skald’s Death Abroad: Kormák and the Scottish blótrisi. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 121 (2006): 161-172.
What’s in a Nonce? Nautical Lexis in Orms þáttr Stórúlfssonar. Scandinavian Studies 78 (2006): 111-128.
Ethics or Pragmatics, Fate or Chance, Heathen, Christian or Godless World? (Hrafnkels saga). Scandinavian Studies 79 (2007): 385-404.
Snorri’s Troll-Wives. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 18 (2009): 1-11.
A Glimpse of Medieval Curonian Vernacular Architecture in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Journal of Baltic Studies 44.3 (2013): 363-374.
Generational Models for the Friendship of Egill and Arinbjǫrn (Egils saga Skallgrímssonar). Scripta Islandica 66 (2015): 143-176.
FǫrSkírnis, Byggvir, and John Barleycorn. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 131 (2016): 21-46.
King Geirröðr (Grímnismál) and the Archaic Motif Cluster of Deficient Rulership, Maritime Setting, and Lower-Body Accidents with Iron Instruments. Nouvelle Mythologie Compareé 3 (2015-2016). Web.
Norse Loki as Praxonym. Journal of Literary Onomastics 5.1 (2016): 17-28. http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/jlo/vol5/iss1/2. Winner of the Wilhelm Nicolaisen Prize in Literary Onomastics, 2016.
‘ok er hann einhendr’: Týr’s Enhanced Functionality. Neophilologus 100(2) (2016): 245-255.
The Runic Inscription on the Straum Whetstone: Cosmic Order, Proto-Skaldic Poetics, and Efficacy. Journal of Indo-European Studies 44.3-4 (2016): 484-493.
Veiled Menace: Word-play (ofljóst) in a Stanza by Egill Skallagrímsson. Études Germaniques 71.2 (2016): 295-306.
Verbal Expedients and Transformative Utterances in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Scandinavian Studies 88.2 (2016): 159-181.
An Ill-Tempered Axe for an Ill-Tempered Smith: The Gift of King Eiríkr blóðøx to Skallagrímr Kveld-Úlfsson in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Scandinavian Canadian Studies 24 (2017): 16–37.
Medieval Norse Naval Architecture in a Poem of Malediction. Journal of Indo-European Studies 46.3-4 (2018): 291-301.
Egill Skallagrímsson, Sonatorrek – The Grievous Loss of Sons. Inventory: A Journal of Translation (Princeton University) 9 (2019): 39-44.
Old Norse víking: Etymology, Semantics, Semiotics. Journal of Indo-Euroipean Studies 47.3-4 (2019): 507-519.
Guilt, Grief, Grievance, and the Encrypted Name in Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek. Scandinavian Studies 92.2 (2020): 229-246.
Runic alu and laukaz on Objects of the Germanic Migration Period: Perspectives from the Edda. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 80 (4) (2020): 401-410.
Command Performance: Coercion, Wit, and Censure in Sneglu-Halla þáttr. Mediaevistik 34 (2021): 25-48.
The Gift of a Sail in a Tale about King Haraldr harðráði Sigurðarson: Textile and Text. Maal og minne 113.2 (2021): 197-216.
The Guta Lag‘s Injunctions Against Pagan Worship: The Term Stafgarþar From the Perspectives of Taxonomy, Legalese, and Poetic Diction. Namn och bygd 110 (2022): 77-86.
Divine Displacement: Óðinn, Týr, and Their Germanic Antecedents. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 82 (2022): 39-70.
Norse Sea- Runes (brimrúnar) in the Viking Age and Beyond. The Mariner’s Mirror 107.4 (October, 2021).
The Etymology and Early Meaning of Old Norse edda. Journal of Indo-European Studies 50.3-4 (2022): 301-306.
The Mythological Norse Ravens Huginn and Muninn: Interrogators of the Newly Slain. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae 139.2 (2022): 143-155.
The Origin of the Old Norse Term Edda. Journal of Indo-European Studies 50.3-4 (2022): 301-306.
Ringing Changes on Old Norse-Icelandic mál in Kormáks saga. Gripla 33 (2022): 69-114.
Runes on the Horn, Leeks in the Ale: Literacy and its Consequences in Early Germanic Drinking Conventions. Petits Propos Culinaires 124 (2022): 110-118.
The Endowing of Askr and Embla, and its Reverberations in the Poetry of Egill Skallagrímsson. Scandinavian Studies 95.3 (2023): 345-366.
Existential Verse-Capping between a Female Troll and the Poet Bragi. Mediaevistik 36 (2023): 51-70.
The Fox as Dying Hero: A New Edition and Translation of Skaufala bálkr, with Haukur Þorgeirsson. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies Novermber, 2023. Online.
The Old Norse Poetic Meter Kviðuháttr as a Medium for History’s Verdict. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik Verdict. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 83.2 (2023): 146-164.
The Old Norse Toponym Grænland and its Tie to the Trade in Walrus Ivory. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 84 (2024) 567–584.
Onomastics and Destiny: Óláfr Höskuldsson and Family (Laxdæla saga). Studia Linguistica Cracoviensia140 (2023): 287-308.
Rigging Norse Ships in Vinland, ca. 1000 AD: The Halyard Block The Northern Mariner 33.3-4 (2023): 369-382.
From Agnostic Heathen to Christian Convert: Trust in One’s Own Might and Main in the Viking Age. Neophilologus 108.1 (2024): 163-179.
The Norse Ship of the Dead, Lexical Substitution, and the Pragmatics of Ship Burials. New Norse Studies (forthcoming).
Power in Check: Royal Non-Committal in the Courting Verses of Haraldr harðráði, paper presented at the conference A Viking in the Sun: Harald hardrada, the Mediterranean, and the Nordic world, between the late Viking Age and the Eve of the Crusades, 2: Women and Power, Istanbul, 8-11 September, 2024. Publication of proceedings, ed. Gianluca Racagna (in progress).
Reading Egill Skallagrímsson’s Hǫfuðlausn (Head-Ransom) as Parody. Mediaevistik (forthcoming).
Mythological Allusion in Egill Skallagrímsson’s Late Verse (under review).
Old Norse Nautical Terminology in Snorri Sturluson and its Relevance for Marine Archaeology and Replica Building (under review).
The Old Norse-Icelandic Literary Trope ofljóst (under review).
Old Norse-Icelandic veðrviti: Weathervane or Status Marker, Standard? (under review).
A Ship (and Poem?) in a Storm in a Stanza by Egill Skallgrímsson (under review).
Student Reminiscenes as Glosses in Two Late Twelfth-Century Icelandic Manuscripts (under review).
The Weaponry of Norse Mercenaries at the Battle of Brunanburh as Depicted in the Saga of Egill Skallagrímsson (under review).
Egils saga Skallagrímssonar (relisted from above)
Poetry and Social Agency in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Scripta Islandica 46 (1995): 29-62.
Onomastic Paronomasia in Old Norse: Technique, Context, and Parallels. Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek 27 (2006): 91-127.
A Glimpse of Medieval Couronian Vernacular Architecture in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Journal of Baltic Studies 44.3 (2013): 363-374.
Generational Models for the Friendship of Egill and Arinbjǫrn (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar). Scripta Islandica 66 (2015): 143-176.
Veiled Menace: Word-Play (ofljóst) in a Stanza by Egill Skallagrímsson. Études Germaniques 71.2 (2016): 295-306.
Verbal Expedients and Transformative Utterances in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Scandinavian Studies 88.2 (2016): 159-181.
An Ill-Tempered Axe for an Ill-Tempered Smith: The Gift of King Eiríkr blóðøx to Skallagrímr Kveldúlfsson in Egil’s saga. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 24 (2017): 16–37.
The Grievous Loss of Sons: An English Translation of Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek. Inventory: The Princeton Journal of Translation 9 (2019): 39-44.
Guilt, Grief, Grievance, and the Encrypted Name in Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek. Scandinavian Studies 92.2 (2020): 229-246.
The Endowing of Askr and Embla, and its Reverberations in the Poetry of Egill Skallagrímsson. Scandinavian Studies 95.3 (2023): 345-366.
Reading Egill Skallagrímsson’s Hǫfuðlausn (Head-Ransom) as Parody. Mediaevistik (forthcoming).
Mythological Allusion in Egill Skallagrímsson’s Late Verse (under review).
A Ship (and Poem?) in a Storm in a Stanza by Egill Skallgrímsson (under review).
Old and Middle English, and Scots
Norse Weaves and Irish Woolens: ME Falding. American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures 4 (1992): 43-54.
The Etymology of Middle English oreven `oar blank.’ The Mariner’s Mirror 84 (1998): 322-325.
Two Nautical Etymologies: killick `small stone anchor’ and drake `male duck.’ ANQ 12 (1999): 3-6.
The Etymology of tinker, with a note on tinker’s dam. English Language Notes 39:2 (2001): 10-12.
A Norse Etymology for luff ‘weather edge of the sail’. The American Neptune 61:1 (2001): 25-38.
Chaucer’s Shipman and the Law Marine. The Chaucer Review 37:2 (2002): 145-158.
Some International Nautical Etymologies. The Mariner’s Mirror 88 (2002): 405-422.
Grendel’s Mother, Icelandic Grýla, and Irish Nechta Scéne: Eviscerating Fear. In Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 16 & 17 (1996-7). Ed. John T. Koch. Andover, MA, and Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003. Pp. 256-268.
The Scend of the Sea: Etymology. The Mariner’s Mirror 89 (2003): 220-222.
Fret ‘sudden squall, gust of wind; swell,’ sea fret ‘sea fog,’ haar ‘cold sea fog.’ Notes and Queries 51 (2004): 351-352.
Middle English woodwose: A Hybrid Etymology? ANQ 17.3 (2004): 12-20.
Middle English and Scots bulwerk and Some Continental Reflexes. Notes and Queries 250 (2005): 164-170.
Æschere in The Battle of Maldon: Fleet, Warships’ Crews, Spearmen, or Oarsmen? Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 107 (2006): 199-205.
Exeter Book Riddle 17 and the L-Rune: British *lester ‘vessel, oat-straw hive’? ANQ 19 (2006): 4-9.
Celtic, Germanic and Romance Interaction in the Development of Some English Words in the Popular Register. Notes and Queries 54 (2007): 132-140.
Chaucer’s Description of the Battle of Actium in The Legend of Cleopatra and the Medieval Tradition of Vegetius’s De re militari. The Chaucer Review 42 (2007): 76-90.
Fourteenth-Century English Balingers: Whence the Name? The Mariner’s Mirror 93 (2007): 4-15.
Grendel’s Mother (Beowulf) and the Celtic Sovereignty Goddess. Journal of Indo-European Studies 35 (2007): 31-52.
The Old English Antecedents of ferry and wherry. ANQ 20 (2007): 3-8.
Sailing Scenes in the Work of the Pearl Poet (Cleanness, Patience). Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 63 (2007): 129-155.
Scantlings. The Mariner’s Mirror 93 (2007): 493-497.
The Etymologies of dog and cur. Journal of Indo-European Studies 36 (2008): 401-410.
King Alfred’s Timbers. SELIM 15 (2008): 117-124.
Skimmour: A Transient Late Medieval Term for ‘Pirate.’ The Mariner’s Mirror 94 (2008): 314-319.
The Wyvern. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 109 (2008): 457-465.
Cei, Unferth, and Access to the Throne. English Studies 90 (2009): 127-141.
The Etymology of strawberry. Moderna språk 103:2 (2009): 15-18.
Problems with the Etymology of English bird. Indo-European Studies Bulletin 14: 1-2 (2009): 42-45.
Þoðer and top in the Old English Apollonius of Tyre. Notes and Queries 56 (2009): 12-14.
Tregetours in ‘The Franklin’s Tale’: Stage Magic and Siege Machines. Notes and Queries 56 (2009): 341-346.
Capstan, Windlass and Winch, Hoist, Haul and Tow. Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 465-473.
Anchor-painter, bow-painter: Etymology. The Mariner’s Mirror 97:4 (20l1): 357-358.
Lewd: An Etymology. Notes and Queries 58 (November, 2011): 495-496.
Three Rustic Etymologies: oaf, lout, and dolt. Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 493-496.
Brose, Atholl brose, spurtle and thivel. Scottish Language 31-32 (2012-2013), 59-63.
Pigs and whistles. ANQ 25:2 (2012): 75-77.
Kitty-corners. ANQ 26.3 (2013): 161-162.
Speculations on Substratum Influence on Early English Vocabulary: pig, colt, frog. Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 21 (2013): 159-172.
Stew, sty, steward: Etymologies. Notes and Queries 60.3 (2013): 373-756.
Gower’s “So nyh the weder thei wol love” (Confessio Amantis, 5, 7048). ANQ 29 (2016): 135-139.
The Names Scyld, Scēf, Bēow, Bēowulf: Shares into Swords. English Studies 97 (2016): 815-820.
Some English Sailing Terms of Norse Origin: weather side, to tack, to luff, to beat to windward. The Mariner’s Mirror 102.3 (2016): 262-274.
The Etymology of Scots gyte ‘mad, out of one’s senses’. Scottish Language 35 (2016): 84-88.
Lexicography and Historical Urban Popular Speech: slum, bloke, slut, slattern. ANQ 30.1 (2017): 32-37.
The Etymology of English toad: Effects of the Celtic Substrate? Tradition Today 7 (2018): 68-73.
The Etymologies of the English Polysemes cuff and clout. ANQ (April, 2018), web.
The Etymology of English boy, ANQ (August, 2018).
Hwæt – The First Word of the Beowulf Poem Revisited. ANQ, January, 2018. Web.
Medieval Anglo-French, English, and Scots Names for Gulls Tradition Today 7 (2018): 45-50.
The Etymology of English hog. ANQ (October, 2018). Web.
Referential Instability in the Historical Designations of Domestic and Game Animals in Britain: The Examples of English teg ‘yearling sheep’and stag ‘male of the red deer’. ANQ (December, 2018).
The Etymology of Old English bædling ‘sodomite’ and the Early History of English bad. ANQ (February, 2019). Web.
Middle English hame, Anglo-French estele ‘wooden collar-parts for a draft horse’. Petits Propos Culinaires 113 (2019): 120-123.
Puck and the Bogymen: British Reflexes of Indo-European Conceptions of Fright and Flight. Tradition Today 8 (2019): 52-56.
Estovers: Customary Communal Rights to Natural Resources in Rural England. ANQ (August, 2020).
The Etymology of bargain and its Background in Early Medieval Trans-Rhenan Trade, ANQ (December, 2020).
The Etymology of English earwig. Tradition Today 9 (2020): 43-46.
More on the Gudgeon. Petits Propos Culinaires 117 (2020): 108-110.
The Origin of epergne ‘branched center piece for the dining table’. Petits Propos Culinaires 116 (2020): 115-118.
Public Cries in the Medieval Languages of Britain havoc! and haro!.ANQ (June, 2020).
Range and chain mail: Two Comparable Etymologies, with a Note on mesh, ANQ, October, 2020.
Rhetorical Coercion and Heroic Commitment: Beowulf’s Reception at Heorot. English Studies (September, 2020).
Chaucer and the Color Adjective blew. The Chaucer Review 56.2 (2021): 119-124.
The Dispossessed House-Spirit: The Etymology of goblin and Some Thoughts on Its Early Use. Tradition Today 10 (2021):33-39.
The Etymology of keelson and Some 14 c. English Evidence for Tacking Gear. The Mariner’s Mirror 107 (2) (2021): 229-231.
The Etymology of mushroom and Some Thoughts on Early Use. Petits Propos Culinaires 117 (2021): 117-119.
Gleaning: Picking up on the Etymology. Petits Propos Culinaires 117 (2021): 120-124.
Shipping and Navigation. The Chaucer Encyclopedia, ed. R. Newhauser, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2022.
The Origin of the Name Beowulf in a Gutnish (Old Gotlandic) *Baþolfr ‘Battle-Wolf. ANQ , March, 2022.
Bede’s Caedmon: A Bilingual Scop from the Court of Oswiu? Studia Linguistica Cracoviensis 141.4 (2024): 279-290.
A Couplet on King Penda of Mercia in the Old Welsh Englynion y Beddau (Stanzas of the Graves). Old English Newsletter 47.2 (July, 2024).
Six Scots Etymologies: glamour, glower, ‘not see a stime‘, gawsy, slawsy, and the Modal Verb boost ‘must’ (under review).
The Weaponry of Norse Mercenaries at the Battle of Brunanburh as Depicted in the Saga of Egill Skallagrímsson (under review).
PREMODERN AND MODERN (various European languages and literatures)
August Strindberg, “Måste,” from Giftas, edited with an introduction, notes, glossary, and illustrations, 65 p. (unpublished).
Gulliver’s Wounded Knee. Swift Studies 7 (1992): 106-109.
C. S. Lewis and the Toponym Narnia. Mythlore 84 (1998): 54-55, 58.
A Treatise from Enlightenment Sweden on `Teaching the Mute to Read and Speak.’ The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 4 (1999): 321-330.
Proust’s Prescription: Sickness as Pre-condition for Writing. (With Lois Bragg). Literature and Medicine 19 (2000): 165-181. Since Lois’s name change to Edna Edith Sayers, her web page is now found at http://www.eesayers.net.
The Dory on the Mosquito Coast and Grand Banks. The American Neptune 62:1 (2002): 111-117.
Joe Hill’s ‘Pie in the Sky’ and Swedish Reflexes of the Land of Cockaigne. American Speech 77 (2002): 331-336.
Malarkey and its Etymology. Western Folklore 61 (2002): 209-212.
Some Fishy Etymologies: Eng. cod, Norse þorskr, Sp. bacalao, Du. kabeljauw. NOWELE 41 (2002): 17-30.
Cyclopedia of Literary Places (Pasadena: Salem, 2003): entries for Primo Levi, If Not Now, When?; James Stephens, Deirdre; August Strindberg, Miss Julie, pp. 273f., 518f., 688f.
Sog, soggy: Etymology. Notes and Queries 17 (2004): 124-126.
Wetymologies: limber, scupper, bilge. The Mariner’s Mirror 90 (2004): 390-97.
The Etymology of queer. ANQ 18 (2005): 15-18.
The Origin of fink ‘informer, hired strikebreaker.’ ANQ 18 (2005): 50-54.
Scones, the OED, and the Celtic Element of English Vocabulary. Notes and Queries 52 (2005): 447-450.
Crank and careen. Notes and Queries 53 (2006): 306-308.
The Etymology of Iroquois: ‘Killer People’ in a Basque-Algonquian Pidgin or an Echo of Norse Írland it mikla? Onomastica Canadiana 88 (2006): 43-56. The article was incorporated in lecture form in Timothy J. Anderson’s one-act play The Etymology of Iroquois, premiered in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in 2008.
Gardens of Horror and Delight: Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and Boccaccio’s Decameron. Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 32 (2006): 30-42.
“Ils appellent le soleil Iesus”: Linguistic Interaction among Montagnais, Basques and Jesuits in New France. Onomastica Canadiana 89 (2007): 53-63.
Lubber, landlubber. Notes and Queries 54 (2007): 376-379.
Moniker: Etymology and Lexicographical History. Miscelénea 35 (2007): 91-97.
Contested Etymologies of Some English Words in the Popular Register. Studia Neophilologica 80 (2008): 15-29.
Hoon, coon, and boong in Peter Temple’s Detective Fiction. Antipodes 22 (2008): 165-167.
Mackerel and penguin: International Words of the North Atlantic. NOWELE 56 (2009): 41-52.
Naming and Renaming the Grampus. Reading Medieval Studies 35 (2009): 79-90.
Two Etymologies: inkle and natty. Notes and Queries 56 (2009): 350-354.
Flews: ‘The Pendulous Lips of a Hound’. Notes and Queries 57: 3 (2010): 337-339.
Pernickety. Scottish Language 29 (2010): 87-90.
Some ‘Alsatian’ Etymologies from Eighteenth-Century London. Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 79-83.
Some Disputed Etymologies: kidney, piskie/pixie, tatting, and slang. Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 172-179.
The Ancestry of John Doe: A Squib. Eolas: The Journal of the American Society of Medieval Irish Studies 5 (2011): 193-198. (As the result of a misunderstanding, this note also appeared in Miscelánea 45 (2012): 119-124.
The Etymologies of Some Terms of Disparagement: culprit, get (and brat), gull, job, niggle,prig, vagrant. Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 21-42.
More Nautical Etymologies. Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 42-50.
Three Paired Etymologies. Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 50-56.
Whirligigs, Gigs, and Giggles. Anglophonia 30 (2011): 203-208.
Challenges for English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations. Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
Dour: Etymology. Notes and Queries 59 (2012): 337-338.
Salmagundi: Etymology. Notes and Queries 59 (2012): 335-337.
Zola and the Gorgons: Cheese and Gossip in Le Ventre de Paris. Petits Propos Culinaires 96 (2012): 72-79.
Descartes and Deaf People. Deaf History International Newsletter 50 (2013): 6-7.
Emil Cioran, Îndreptar Pătimaş (The Passionate Handbook), excerpts. Inventory: The Princeton Journal of Translation 4 (November, 2013).
Fid and Marlinspike: Etymologies. The Mariner’s Mirror 99.3 (2013): 334-337.
A Source for Dr. Johnson’s Self-Referential Entry lexicographer. ANQ (2013), online.
Eastern Dishes in Late Seventeenth-Century British Cuisine. Petits Propos Culinaires 101 (2014): 112-117.
‘Like harp and harrow’. Notes and Queries 61.4 (2014): 482-483.
Parbuckling. The Mariner’s Mirror 100.1 (2014): 75-76.
The Etymology of squilgee and squeegee. The Mariner’s Mirror 102.4 (2016): 447-449.
English Etymologies from the Popular Register, I. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae 133 (2016): 171-181.
English Etymologies from the Popular Register, II. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae 133.3 (2016): 259-267.
Etymologies of Canuck. Onomastica Canadiana 95 (2016): 75-84.
The Galician Snack (Imbiß) in Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch. Petits Propos Culinaires 105 (2016): 106-112.
‘Origin unknown’: Pursuing Some Etymological Hold-outs in the OED. Studia Neophilologica 88.2 (2016): 205-222.
Two Scottish Etymologies for English Words [spree and jinx]. Scottish Language 35 (2016): 43-50.
English Etymologies from the Popular Register, III. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae 134.1 (2017): 7-14.
A Hiberno-Norse Etymology for English fetch ‘apparition of a living person’. ANQ 30 (2017): 205-209.
How to eat crayfish, Stockholm, 1884. Petits Propos Culinaires 107 (2017): 108-116.
Isherwood’s Kuno von Pregnitz (Mr. Norris Changes Trains), and the Premise of Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. ANQ 30 (2017): 255-258.
“Make that two toddies!” [etymology of toddy]. Petits Propos Culinaires 108 (2017): 82-85.
Of Blind Mice, Bald Mice, and Bawkie-Birds: Euphemism and Early Names for the Bat. ANQ (November, 2017), web.
Scrimshaw and Lexicogenesis. The Mariner’s Mirror 103.2 (2017): 220-223.
Distortions of the Hero: Felix Krull and Cú Chulainn. Oxford German Studies 47:2 (2018): 201-210.
Franz Kafka’s Vor dem Gesetz in English translation. Inventory: The Princeton Journal of Translation 8 (2018): 105-107.
The Origin of Names for the Skimmington Ride: Public Shaming and Communal Entertainment in Rural Britain. ANQ (9 July, 2018), web.
Problems in Etymologizing Reduplicative Compounds of the Types flim-flam and higgledy-piggledy. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae. Part I: 135.2 (2018): 97-106; Part II: 135.3 (2018): 147-158.
Curmudgeon, an Etymology. ANQ (July, 2019).
A Dicey Pair of Etymologies: minx ‘saucy girl’ and grifter ‘thief, cheater’. ANQ (April, 2019). Web.
The Etymology of list ‘inclination of a ship’. The Mariner’s Mirror 105 (3) (2019): 356-357.
Exotic, Erotic: The Etymology of hootchy-kootchy. ANQ (October, 2019).
Fiddle-faddle and flibbertigibbet: Etymolo9gies. ANQ (August, 2019).
The Hidden Lexical Lives of the Fool, Trifle, and Gooseberry. Petits Propos Culinaires 115 (2019): 113-119.
Honky-tonk: Lexicogenesis and Etymology, ANQ (December, 2019).
National Identity and Lexis: Scottish tartan and tartan. Scottish Language 38 (2019): 74-81.
Oddments: A Miscellany of English Etymologies [bounder, brand-new, cad, cahoots, camp, corduroy, duds, flake (as drying rack), gaff, gentle (as maggot), Greenland, hanky-panky, hovel, huckster, lazy-bed, nark, niggle, puke, scam, scathing, scythe, skittish, snath]. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae, Part I, 136.1 (2019, ): 9-23, Part II, 136,2 (2019): 83-97, Part III, 136.3 (2019): 181-198.
Skulduggery: Etymology. ANQ (May, 2019). Web.
Terms of Disarray: The Etymologies of harum-scarum, pell-mell, and helter-skelter. ANQ (September, 2019).
The Chromatics of the Blues. ANQ (March, 2020).
Are the Lexicographers Out to Lunch? The Etymologies of lunch, luncheon, and snack. Petits Propos Culinaires 121 (2021): 114-119.
Drag and drag queen: Speculations on Etymology. ANQ (November, 2021).
The Etymology of English earwig. Tradition Today 9 (2020): 43-46.
The Etymology of jazz – One More Time. ANQ (January, 2020).
Twelve English Etymologies from the Social Margins [aloof/aluff, boondoggle, cod as ‘dupe’, codswallop, mollycoddle/mollycot, natty, welch/jew/gyp, and yokel], I. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae 137.2 (2020): 111-122. II, SLUIC 137.3 (2020): 187-197.
The Etymology of dyke and bull-dyke. ANQ (September, 2021).
Quiche: The Etymology Behind the Variation in Crusts and Fillings. Petits Propos Culinaires 120 (2021): 114-116.
Sixteenth to Eighteenth-Century Underclass Slang: autem mort ‘married woman’. ANQ (April, 2021).
Sleaze: An Etymology and History. ANQ (February, 2021).
Snoopy’s Pedigree: The Etymology of beagle. ANQ (July, 2021).
Dander and dandruff: Etymology. ANQ (December, 2022).
The Etymology of faggot and its Historical Tie to Heresy. ANQ (January, 2022).
‘It gives me the willies‘. ANQ ((July, 2022).
Savory and Unsavory Origins for the Terms clabber and clafoutis. Petits Propos Culinaires 124 (2022): 97-100.
Cosmic Egg and Infant Demiurge: Antecedents of Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden (Blood Meridian), ANQ (April, 2023).
Dogwood, Whippletree, and Swingletree: Cross-Referential Etymologies. ANQ (September, 2023).
The Etymology and Early History of skiff: Internationanl Waters. The Mariner’s Mirror 109.4 (2023): 473-475.
Óðinn’s Avatar: McCarthy’s Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 11.2 (2023): 187-191.
Of Peerie Bairns and Periwinkles. ANQ (April, 2024).
Playing the Dozens: Etymology Reconsidered. ANQ (December, 2023).
Twee ‘dainty, quaint, precious, mawkish’. ANQ (July, 2023).
‘Wae, hae, blow the man down’. Argonauta 11.1 (2023): 19-22.
The Dark Millennium of souse. Petits Propos Culinaires 128 (2024): 12-16.
Hijack: Etymology and History. ANQ (August, 2024).
Some Some British ‘Black Dog’ Names: Barghest, Gytrash, Moddey Dhoo, Skriker,Shuck.Tradition Today 12 (2024): 19-24.
Spunk, Gormless, and Their Multi-Factor Etymologies. ANQ, November, 2024.
The Source of the Madman’s Apocalyptic Imagery on the Death of God in Nietzsche’s Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Oxford Grman Studies (forthcoming).
Emil Cioran, Amurgul gîndurilor (The Twlight of Thoughts), Part I, English translation and commentary. Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature (forthcoming).
‘What do women want?’ Chaucer’s Concept of Female Sovereignty in Atwood’s The Edible Woman. The Margaret Atwood Studies Journal (forthcoming).
The Etymology of Shetlandic hap ‘shawl, coverlet’ and its Tie to the Old Norse Gods (under review).
Grit: True and Otherwise (under review).
JAMES JOYCE (bibulogruffito off pier-refused oracles)
A Schoolmaster’s June Day Walk Round the City: Joyce and Strindberg’s Albert Blom. Studia Neophilologica 61 (1989): 183-192.
Aweghost Stringbag in Finnegans Wake. The James Joyce Quarterly 27 (1990): 859-862.
Molly’s Monologue and the Old Woman’s Complaint in James Stephens’s The Crock of Gold. James Joyce Quarterly 36 (1999): 640-650.
“A faded print of Heenan boxing Sayers” (Ulysses 10.831f.). James Joyce Quarterly 47 (2011): 283-286.
The Deflation of the Medieval in Joyce’s Ulysses. The Year’s Work in Medievalism (2013), web.
‘The abnihilisation of the etym’ (Finnegans Wake, 353). Hypermedia Joyce Studies 13 (September, 2014), web.
“Coalmansbell” (Finnegans Wake, 278.11): Word, Flesh, and Ink. ANQ 29.3 (2016): 172-176.
How to Eat Crayfish, Stockholm, 1884. Petits Propos Culinaires 107 (2017): 108-116.
A Pair of Dicey Etymologies: minx ‘saucy girl’ and grifter ‘thief, cheater’. ANQ (April, 2019). Web.
The Etymology of English earwig. Tradition Today 9 (2020): 43-46.
Cosmic Egg and Infant Demiurge: Antecedents of Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden (Blood Meridian). ANQ (April, 2023).
WORK IN PROGRESS
The Azores: A New Entry in the Narrative Complex of Norse Vinland, Irland hit mikla (Greater Ireland), Hvítramannaland (White Men’s Land), and the Irish Tradition of Otherworldy Isles.
Egill Skallagrímsson on Poetry.
Etymologies of some unexplained English words: arrant, askance, (quilting) bee, boast, boost, (pass the) buck, clap-trap, clog and log, cockamamie, cockroach, descry, dogie and stot, dudgeon, feisty, fit, fun ‘to cheat, trick’, phony, gew-gaws, hap (shawl, coverlet), hob-nob, hooligan, hugger-mugger, indict, jemmy/jimmy ‘burglar’s crowbar’, gimcrack, gimlet, gimmick, kid and cod ‘to dupe, hoax’, kidnap, knick-knack, leery, to leer, and to lour/lower, maple, metal/mettle, namesake and nicknamem, rapscallion, razzle-dazzle, rogue, scallawag, shenaningans, shortening, skedaddle, topsy-turvy, to wear (nautical), welkin. whelk.
Greenlandic Walrus Ivory, North American Burl Maple, and Early Medieval Scandinavian Trade in the Raw Materials of Luxury Goods: The Ambiguous Testimony of the Vinland Sagas.
Hero at the Helm, Lady at the Loom: Earl Rǫgnvaldr of Orkney’s Mediterranean Sea-Faring Verses.
The Iceland of the Sagas: ‘No Country for Old Men’?
Perceval and Pierced Limbs: Myth and History.
Sagas of Icelanders: Not ‘Where Did They Come From?’ but ‘Where are They Going?’
The Vinland Sagas as Conversion Narratives.
ETYMOLOGIES
A surprisingly large number of words in the vocabulary of English are without a satisfactory identification of origin and account of early history. To illustrate the kind of scholarly work still to be done, this section offers summary etymological notes on about 120 English words previously without adequate historical explanation. The range is from familiar but problematic ‘isolates’ (e.g., dog) through less common, often technical, terms, to words of mainstream English. More ample discussion of each word is found in the author’s studies listed at the end of each note. The list is drawn from work prior to 2014. Studies from the period 2014-2025 are noted in the general bibliography and in the closing chronological listing.
ahoy! nautical interjection derived from singular imperative form of Anglo-French oir ‘to hear, listen’ (cf. oyez!) plus the proleptic prefix a- ‘to, at’, frequent in shipboard commands and deictic references; ‘Ahoy! and Juryrigging: Etymologies,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 188-91.
balderdash < Irish béal ‘mouth; speech’ + diardanach ‘churlish, angry’, originally a compound meaning ‘coarse speech’ when introduced into underclass speech in 17 c. London, later ‘nonsense’. A hypothetical Scots Gaelic equivalent, *beuldiardachd, is phonologically even closer. Note, too, the possible influence at an early stage of English balder ‘to use coarse language’; ‘A Miscellany of English Etymologies with Some Thoughts on Isolates and Loans’ (under review).
bastard < Old French bastard < deprecatory French suffix -ard attached to a derivative of Old Frankish *bastjan ‘to plait, weave, stitch loosely’, used figuratively of the offspring of a socially and legally loose sexual union; ‘Bastard and basket: The Etymologies Reviewed,’ Leeds Studies in English 39 (2009): 117-25.
beat as in ‘to beat to the windward’, i.e., to tack, to sail diagonally in the general direction from which the wind is blowing, < Anglo-French and Norman beiter < Old Norse beita ‘to cause to bite’, as of a ship or sail, into the wind; ‘More Nautical Etymologies,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 42-50.
bird Old and Middle English brid ‘bird, the young of fowl and animals’ < Brittonic *brida ‘spring bird’ < Brittonic theonym *Bríd < Indo-European *bherehg- ‘high, eminent’ or bhergh- ‘bright’; cf. Irish divine names Brí, Bríg, Brigit, Irish brídein or giollabride ‘Brigit’s servant’, a name for the oystercatcher; ‘Problems with the Etymology of English bird,’Indo-European Studies Bulletin 14: 1-2 (2009): 42-45.
bob in the sense of cutting a woman’s hair short; < Anglo-French beaubelet ‘ornament, small globular mass’ (cf. English bauble, plumb bob), influenced by Middle English bobben, babbelen ‘to swing to and fro, or up and down’ (cf. Middle English babyl ‘scale-beam, jester’s scepter’, the latter meaning possibly affected by Middle English babbelen ‘to babble’); ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
boondocks originally British, then U.S., military slang, < Irish buannacht ‘billeting’, buannaidheacht ‘the experience of billeting’, especially at a remote location; ‘Contested Etymologies of Some English Words in the Popular Register,’ Studia Neophilologica 80 (2008): 15-29.
booze < Anglo-French bouge, buz ‘bucket, water-bottle, water-budget’, the denominator being transferred from container (large bottle) to contained (beverage, preferentially alcoholic); ‘Three Anglo-Norman Etymologies: Booze, Gear, and Gin,’ Notes and Queries 57.4 (2010): 461-65.
bully originally ‘fellow; kinsman; lover’, ultimate etymology obscure, perhaps from common Germanic (OED); from the 18th c. in the sense of ‘urban tough’ influenced by Irish bualadh ‘striking; contention’; ‘Some “Alsatian” Etymologies from Eighteenth-Century London,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 79-83.
bun < French and Norman beugne, beigne (cf. the diminutive beignet ‘fritter’) < Frankish bungo ‘small globular mass’, adapted into Middle English as bunne, dissimulated from bung; ‘More Buns,’ Petits Propos Culinaires 100 (2014): 126-131.
Canuck as originally used of a French-Canadian in New England; from 16th c. Basque kanoako ‘canoe person’ or Basque kanatako ‘resident in an Iroquoian settlement, < Iroquoian kaná:ta’ (to use a modern spelling) ‘town, village’, compounds incoporating the Basque relational suffix -ko; not < Iroquoian kanuchsa (kanónhsa’ in modern Mohawk orthography), supposedly ‘the resident of a kanata or community’ but actually Iroquoian for ‘house’, not its inhabitant; ‘Etymologies of Canuck,’ Onomastica Canadiana 95 (2016): 75-84.
cap in ‘to set one’s cap at’, i.e., have amorous or marital ambitions with respect to a certain person, < French mettre le cap sur ‘to point the (ship’s) head in a given direction’; ‘”To set one’s cap at someone”: Head-Gear or Ship’s Head?’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 336-37.
capstan < Middle English *cablestond = cable + stond ‘barrel stood on end’; ‘Capstan, Windlass and Winch, Hoist, Haul and Tow,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 465-73.
carfax as the meeting point of, typically, four roads; developing in parallel with French carrefour, < Latin quadrifurcus > northwestern French and Anglo-Norman *quarefuge > ME *quarefuts> quarefuks > carfax; ‘At Fours and Fives: carfax and quincunx,’ Notes and Queries 55 (2008): 131-134.
carwitchet as pun, quibble, conundrum, < Irish ceartuighthe ‘corrected, set right’ (< ceart ‘right, just’), introduced to the life about town of early 17 c. London.
cater-cornered, kitty-corners (U.S.) < Anglo-French cater ‘quarter’, referencing diagonally opposed corners of a square or the apices of two quarters of a square that are created by intersecting diagonal lines; ‘Kitty-corners,’ ANQ 26.3 (2013): 161-162.
chitterling as the small intestine of certain animals and the derivative culinary dishes, tripe or sausage; from Middle English kettling (< kettle) but possibly via the Norse-inflected speech of the Danelaw from Old Norse *ketillingar ‘little products of the cooking pot; ‘A Miscellany of English Etymologies with Some Thoughts on Isolates and Loans’ (under review).
chough < Anglo-French choghe < Norman and, at a further remove, Picard French, < Old Frankish káwa; ‘Chough: Semantic and Phonological Development,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 169-72.
chowder fish and seafood soup, < French chaudière ‘kettle, cooking pot’, especially as used at sea, under the influence of Old French chaudumé ‘a kind of sauce’, seen in chaudumée de brochet ‘pike chowder’; ‘Chowder: Origin and Early History of the Name,’ Petits Propos Culinaires 91 (2010): 88-93.
citizen < Anglo-French citain, cizain < cité ‘city, town’ + suffix -ain, -ein, under the influence of Late Latin civitatensis ‘relating to a burgess’; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
cod back formation, to designate larger fish taken farther from shore, from English cuddy < Scots Gaelic cudán, cudainn ‘coalfish, saithe’, of the cod family; ‘Some Fishy Etymologies: Eng. cod, Norse þorskr, Sp. bacalao, Du. kabeljauw,’ NOWELE 41 (2002): 17-30.
colt from a Brittonic (Old British) root *kappal- (cognate with Gaulish caballos ‘draft horse’) plus a diminutive suffix in –t-, assumed into early Old English; ‘Speculations on Sub-Stratum Influence on Early English Vocabulary: pig, colt, frog,’Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (forthcoming).
cove as ‘guy, fellow’, now dated underclass English slang. Despite the OED’s referral to possible Scottish parallels (cofe ‘pedlar’) and dismissive summary (‘the origin of the word still remains obscure’), cove is readily referred to Anglo-Romani and the Romani masculine demonstrative adjective kova ‘this man’ (subsequently used as a noun).
cue as theatrical prompt; possibly from Anglo-French queue, cowe ‘tail’ as used, along with pee ‘foot’, for the ‘foot of fine’, or bottom third of an indenture, the copy of the text that remained with the Kings court. This part, marked Q, may have served as model for marking up theater scripts, on which individual actors might enter a Q at the beginnings of their speeches.
culprit medieval judicial abbreviation; < culp.rit. < culpa reicitur ‘culpability is rejected/denied’ or culpam reicit ‘he denies culpability’; ‘The Etymologies of Some Terms of Disparagement: culprit, get (and brat), gull, job, niggle, prig, vagrant,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 31-42.
cur < British Latin *canis curialis or *canis curiae ‘yard dog’ < Latin curia ‘courtyard’; ‘The etymologies of dog and cur,’ Journal of Indo-European Studies 36 (2008): 401-10.
dog < Old English (gen. pl. dacga < *docg) < Old British (Brittonic) da ‘goods’ + ci ‘dog’, with effect of lenition > *dagi ‘property dog, guard dog’; ‘The Etymologies of dog and cur,’ Journal of Indo-European Studies 36 (2008): 401-10.
dollop earlier dallap, ‘shapeless mass, large quantity’, also ‘clump of plants’, < daw ‘jackdaw’ (referencing the large, untidy nests of the bird) + lob ‘lump, clump’; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
dour from Scots, this in turn from Scots Gaelic dùr, derived from Old Irish dúr (with the same range of meanings as dour), the Irish form a loan from early medieval Church Latin durus ‘hard, unfeeling’; ‘Dour: Etymology,’ Notes and Queries 59 (2012): 337-38.
drudge in the sense of kitchen worker; < Germanic *truhtsezzo ‘seneschal, ard’ (cf. Late Latin drossatus); the loss of prestige and downward mobility may be due to the introduction of these last two terms into the offices of aristocratic households; ‘Scullions, Cook’s Knaves, and Drudges,’ Notes and Queries 56: 4 (2009): 499-502.
dude ‘pretentious or sharp dresser’ and later ‘guy, fellow’ of one’s social group, often in the vocative, ‘hey! dude!’; < Irish daoi ‘fool’, extended to ‘fop’, or dúid ‘craning neck; cad’; a slang term transferred from the immigrant Irish community in America (most likely in New York) to English-language journalism in the 1880s, later incorporated in the phrase dude ranch (1921).
escrow < Anglo-French escrowe < Old French esrcoue ‘piece, scrap’ < Frankish *skrôda ‘ditto’; the Norman and Anglo-Norman reflex was affected by Old Norse skrá ‘strip of hide’, so that the narrower signification ‘piece of parchment’ dominated and led, via Law French, to the early modern form escrow and the meaning ‘appendix attached to a legal document’, eventually to only its contents, e.g. a contractual agreement concerning monies held in escrow, while Middle English continued Anglo-French escrowe as scrue in the more general meanings of ‘piece, piece of parchment, document’; ‘Escrow: Etymology and Early History’ (forthcoming).
esethe Spanish masculine singular demonstrative adjective and pronoun, now a familiar Mexican and Chicano apostrophe, ‘dude, buddy’; loan translation from Romani and the para-Romani dialect of Andalusia, Caló (the in-group language of the Spanish ‘gypsies’), where such use of demonstratives is recorded. In the Americas, Spanish ese, nominally ‘that, that one’, is substituted for a Caló form such as ocoba but the function of the earlier word is retained, for a meaning of roughly ‘that specific man here under consideration’, that is, you, my friend.
fid as marlingspike, < Middle Irish fiodh ‘wood, grove, tree, simple wooden object’, e.g., cane, spar; ‘Fid and Marlingspike: Etymologies,’ The Mariner’s Mirror 99.3 (2013): 309-312.
finagle in the sense ‘to use dishonest or devious methods to bring something about’ (OED), adaptation of finical ‘over-nice or particular, affectedly fastidious, excessively punctilious or precise, in speech, dress, manners, methods of work’, current from the 16th to 19th centuries. In the semantic development, conceit is equated with deceit and attention to detail with insider knowledge and conniving.
flabbergast originally Scottish,< Old French fable ‘fable, invention’ in its variant flable, adopted as flaba or flabber + English gast or agast ‘to confound’, with the meaning ‘to confuse, confound, astonish with verbal invention’; Flabbergast (forthcoming).
flamenco Spanish, ostensibly ‘Fleming’, in reference to the style and content of various performing arts, < Caló flamar, reportedly ‘to joke, fool around’ but assumed to have a deeper subtext, < Andalusian flamar ‘to flame, be ardent’, which is seen as a loan translation from a Romani form such as phabárdol ‘to burn, catch fire; to become enthusiastic; to fall in love; to be fooled’; ‘Spanish flamenco: Origin, Loan Translation, and In- and Out-group Evolution (Romani, Caló, Castilian),’ Romance Notes 48 (2007): 13-22.
flews drooping lips or chops of hounds, < Scots Gaelic fliuch ‘wet’; cf. fliuchbheulach ‘wet-mouthed’; ‘Flews: The Pendulous Lips of a Hound,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 337-39.
freak related to English frecken (archaic) < Middle English fraken ‘freckle’, originally used figuratively of a willed or unwilled intrusion in the color or pattern of a fabric; ‘Contested Etymologies of Some English Words in the Popular Register,’ Studia Neophilologica 80 (2008): 15-29.
frog from a reconstructed Old British (Brittonic) form *frogna ‘croaker, frog’, on the analogy of Gaulish srogna >ðrogna >frogna ‘nose, nostril’, from the Indo-European root *srenk- ‘to snore’; British frogna would have coalesced with Germanic frosc in Britain to give Old English frogga; ‘Speculations on Sub-Stratum Influence on Early English Vocabulary: pig, colt, frog,’Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (forthcoming).
gab garrulous speech, < Middle English gabb ‘boasting, mockery’ < Anglo-French gab < Old Norse gabb, one of several Germanic loans from Gaulish uapos ‘voice, speech’, possibly influenced by Gaulish gobbo- ‘mouth’, especially in a martial context; the early modern English forms influenced by Scots Gaelic gob ‘mouth’; ‘Germanic gabb, Old French gab, English gab: Heroic Mockery and Boasting,’ SELIM (17 2012): 79-90.
gander as in ‘have a gander’; not originally associated with the name of the male goose but derived from Old French and Anglo-French gandir ‘to stray, deviate’, which aligned itself with English wander in Middle English, leading to an association of gander and wander (as in the nursery rhyme ‘Goosey goosey gander, whither shall I wander’). Later, interplay with gawk led both words to reference both idle perambulation and rubber-necking, with the image of the long-necked goose and gander in the background.
gazebo < Arabic qushaybah ‘mirador, belvedere, viewing roof or platform’, perhaps entering English from 18th-century Tangiers; ‘Eastern Prospects: Kiosks, Belvederes, Gazebos,’ Neophilologus 87 (2003): 299-305.
gear in the sense of ‘equipment’; < Middle English gere < Anglo-French greie < Old Norse greiði ‘equipment, rigging’; ‘Three Anglo-Norman Etymologies: Booze, Gear, and Gin,’Notes and Queries 57.4 (2010): 461-65.
gin ‘skill, cunning, artifice, snare, mechanical device’, < Norman French gin, engin (< Latin ingenium ‘talent, ingenious invention’), influenced by the negative semantics of Old Norse ginna ‘to deceive’, ginnung ‘deception’; ‘Three Anglo-Norman Etymologies: Booze, Gear, and Gin,’ Notes and Queries 57.4 (2010): 461-65.
gird sharp blow, jibe, < Old Norse grjýta ‘to pelt with stones’ (< ON grjót ‘stone’); ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
girl Middle English gerl, via an unattested Old English form, < Old British (Brittonic) *gabrillos ‘kid’, young goat’ or *iarillos ‘chick’, loaned into Anglo-Saxon (early Old English) as a term for a child of either sex; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
gringo Spanish ‘foreigner’, usually anglophone, < Caló gringo ‘foreigner’ < Andalusian peregrino with aphaeresis + Romani suffix –ko, < Latin peregrinus ‘pilgrim’; ‘An Unnoticed Early Attestation of gringo: Implications for its Origin,’ Bulletin of Spanish Studies 86 (2009): 323-30.
grit as in True Grit, ‘hard grit’, etc., < Scottish Gaelic grìd ‘substance, quality’ (cf. grìdeil ‘of good quality, assiduous’, Scots gritty); influenced by grit ‘minute particles of stone or sand’; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,‘ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
gun used figuratively of a tubular device, < Middle English gonne ‘gown; siege engine (with channel)’ < Anglo-French gune, on the analogy of Middle French canon < Italian cannone ‘cannon’ < canna ‘conduit, pipe’; ‘Speculations on the Etymology of gun,’ Indo-European Studies Bulletin 13:2 (2009): 17-20.
gusset < Old French gousset, originally a figurative term for the armpit, then the triangular patch of chain mail that covered it (now extended to fabrics), < Old French gousse ‘pod of a legume’, itself possibly derived < Frankish *guz ‘casting, an object made in a mould’, the pod being compared to the opened mould, an image still relevant to a raised arm that exposes an armpit.
ha-ha as a dry moat around a garden; not from ha! ha! as an expression of surprise on encountering such a stone- and turf-faced ditch or from an equivalent French exclamation, but from Frankish *haga ‘enclosed piece of land’, which entered Gallo-Romance and was preserved in later French. A related Frankish word developed as Old French haie ‘fence, hedge’ so that French hahha, from which the English term was loaned in the early 18th c., may represent a disambiguated, more specialized application, perhaps originally a military or ritual one.
harp as in the expression ‘agree like harp and harrow’, i.e., not at all; originally based on harp, an agricultural instrument in the form of a sieve made up of a frame and wire, for sifting soil. Thus harp and harrow are two images drawn from the same sphere. Today harp is doubtless understood as the musical instrument in the now obsolete expression; ‘Like harp and harrow‘ (forthcoming).
helter-skelter reduplicative rhyming formation on medieval Anglo-French antecedents of kelter ‘proper arrangement’ (q.v.), with Anglo-French oltre < Latin ultra ‘beyond’; ‘Out of kelter, helter-skelter,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 179-82.
hoist formed on the past participle of English hise, a 16th-century nautical reflex of Basque jaso! ‘haul! raise!’; cf. other reflexes along the Atlantic seaboard: Portuguese içar, Spanish izar, Italian issare, French hisser, hinser, Breton hiñsen, Dutch hijschen, Low German hiesen, hissen, German hissen, Danish hisse, Norwegian, Swedish hissa; ‘Capstan, Windlass and Winch, Hoist, Haul and Tow,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 465-73.
honeycomb < Old English *hunig-waba = hunig ‘honey’ + *waba ‘web, woven artifact’ (cf. Old High German waba ‘honeycomb’), with a shift of word boundary to *huni-gwaba, followed by re-identification of the second element as comb (folk etymology); ‘An Early Set of Bee-keeping Words in Anglo-Norman French and Middle English,’ ANQ 22:2 (2009): 8-13.
hooligan as a member of a British street gang; perhaps, like the Irish name Houlihan (Ó hUallacháin), from Irish uall- ‘pride’ (cf. uallach ‘vain, boastful’, uallachán ‘coxcomb’), for a self-chosen name with a meaning like ‘the Cocks of the Walk’.
hurdy-gurdy originally probably ‘tumult, uproar’, later the name of a lute-shaped, stringed musical instrument operated with a crank, resined wheel, and keys; Old Franish hurd ‘hurdle’ > Old French hourdis ‘hurdle, scaffolding’, the tight weave or plaiting of the hurdle then metaphorically extended to a mêlée; loaned into Middle English as hourdis and complemented by a second, reduplicating element to yield hurdy-gurdy; ‘Etymology and the Problem of Isolates and Loans’ (forthcoming).
husk Middle English huske, < Anglo-French huce, housche, heuke ‘covering, sheath’ (cf. modern French housse), < Old Frankish *hulftia ‘saddle blanket’ and related; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
Iroquois via French < late medieval Basque *erukoak, irukoak ‘Irishmen’; The Etymology of Iroquois: “Killer People” in a Basque-Algonquian Pidgin or an Echo of Norse Irland it mikla “Greater Ireland”?’ Onomastica Canadiana 88 (2006): 43-56.
jib as in jib-boom, jib-sail, < Anglo-French gibet ‘two-faced club, mace’ (also ‘gibbet, gallows’), < Old Frankish *gibb ‘two headed club’; the boom or sail being seen as a ‘branch’ off the mast; ‘Jib, Gybe, Jibe (U.S.)–and Gibbet,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 191-92.
jinx not from Greek ἴυγξ or Latin iynx, the wryneck, a small woodpecker, implicated in ancient love philters and charms, but from Scots jink ‘a sudden, evasive movement’, used of Rugby football, then, in America, as jinks/jinx, in a transferred sense to identify the cause of an almost supernatural, inexplicable, recurrent loss in sports; ‘Two Etymologies: spree and jinx,’ Scottish Language (forthcoming).
job originally an assignment or undertaking on the borders of legality, < French jobbe ‘ninny, fool’ (< long-suffering Biblical character Job); cf. French monter le job ‘to turn a confidence trick’; ‘The Etymologies of Some Terms of Disparagement: culprit, get (and brat), gull, job, niggle, prig,vagrant,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 31-42.
jury as in jury-mast, jury-rigging, < Anglo-French adjectival form *jovril < Old French jovrir ‘to be adequate’ < Latin juvere ‘to help, assist’, via intermediate Middle English form jori-, attested in jori-seil; subsequently again transformed by folk etymology into jerry-, as in jerry-rigged; ‘Ahoy! and jury-rigging; Etymologies,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 191-92.
kelter U.S. kilter, < Anglo-French *eschelture ‘the state of being in military formation’ < eschele ‘military formation’ < Latin scala ‘ladder; grid’; ‘Out of kelter, helter-skelter,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 179-82.
kidney Middle English nere ‘kidney’ (< Old English *nere) + kid ‘pod-shaped (organ)’, to distinguish the word from a near homonym; perceived as a plural, kidnere was given the singular form kidney; ‘Some Disputed Etymologies: kidney, piskie/pixie, tatting and slang,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 172-79.
lacks in the international trade jargon of the 18 c., bricks or bags of gum lacquer from south-east Asia, used in the production of varnish; ‘East India Company Lacks,’ The Mariner’s Mirror 99 (2013), online.
lanyard originally short lengths of rope used on board ship; Middle English lainer < Anglo-French lasniere (metathesized form of *nasle < Old Frankish*nastila ‘lace, thong’), recast by seamen on the analogy of halyard, sailyard; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
lewd Old English lewede ‘lay, non-clerical’, < Brittonic (Old British) *luxtodos ‘(person) in the charge of someone’, via /luchede/ (cf.Welsh llwyth ‘family, comunity’), subject to later pejoration: ‘artless, vulgar, vile, lascivious’; ‘The Etymology of lewd,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 495-96.
lout < Old English læt ‘late, slow’, influenced semantically and phonologically by Old Norse latr ‘slow, sluggish, lazy’; cf. English dialect to lout ‘to wander, be idle’, louter ‘idler’; ‘Three Rustic Etymologies: lout, oaf, dolt,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 493-95.
luck < Old Norse lúka (reflexive form lúkast) ‘to close, end, fall/turn out’, often used of legal settlements or one’s fate; ‘The Etymology of luck’ (forthcoming).
luff ‘weather edge of a sail’, < Norman French and Anglo-French lof ‘sail pin, boomkin’, earlier l’of, < Old Norse úfr ‘splinter, thorn’ (in a figurative use that likens the gunwale and sail-pin to a branch with a thorn); ‘A Norse Etymology for luff “the weather edge of a sail”,’ The American Neptune 62: 1 (2002): 111-17.
mackerel < Basque maker, makel ‘marked, disfigured’ < Latin maculatus ‘spotted, speckled’, spreading to languages along the European Atlantic seaboard; ‘Mackerel and penguin: International Words of the North Atlantic,’ NOWELE 56-57 (2009): 41-52.
malarkey first popularized on the American west coast, < Irish meallaireacht /malaracht/ ‘deception, allurement, amusement’, recast by English-speakers to align with the Irish name Malarkey; ‘Malarkey and its Etymology,’ Western Folklore 61 (2002): 209-212.
mare’s nest as ‘an untidy or confused mess, a misconception’; generally associated with mare as the female of the horse but more likely mare < Old English mera ‘a spirit producing a feeling of suffocation in a sleeping person or animal, a spectre, hag’; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
marlingspike a metal tool for opening the strands of a nautical line; ultimately traceable, via many languages of the Atlantic seaboard and multiple transformations, some driven by folk etymology, to Middle Low German merling ‘reinforcing (cord to be wound around a heavier rope)’; ‘Fid and Marlingspike: Etymologies,’ The Mariner’s Mirror 99.3 (2013): 309-312.
oaf originally ‘elf-child, changeling’, < Old Norse álfr ‘elf’, assumed but unattested in Norman French *aufe, whence Middle and early Modern English spellings auf, aufe, ouphe, oaf, influenced in the later meanings of ‘large, clumsy or boorish person’ by Old French and Middle English auphin ‘elephant’, the name for a chess piece now known as the bishop in English and le fou in French; ‘Three Rustic Etymologies: lout, oaf, dolt,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 493-95.
oreven ‘oak blank’, Middle English < Old Norse árefni = ár ‘oar’ + efni ‘the makings’; ‘The Etymology of Middle English oreven “oar blank”,’ The Mariner’s Mirror 84 (1998): 322-25.
painter a short rope used to secure a ship’s anchor or ship’s boat; Old French poigneur ‘something that seizes’ (cf. poing ‘fist’), > Anglo-French *poinneur > Middle English peintour, pentre under the effects of folk etymology (cf. painter ‘one who paints’); ‘Anchor-painter, bow-painter: Etymology,’ The Mariner’s Mirror 97:3 (2011): 357-58.
parbuckling as a means of hoisting heavy objects with a set of slings, especially in a nautical context; < Anglo-French *parboucler ‘to buckle about thoroughly’ = French prefix par in a perfective sense + verb boucler < boucle ‘buckle’; for a time recast, on the analogy of carbuncle and its variants, as parbuncle; ‘Parbuckling,’ The Mariner’s Mirror (forthcoming).
penguin < Welsh or Breton pen gwyn ‘white headland’, referencing the guano-covered cliffs at the northeastern corner of Funk Island, Newfoundland, a seamark in the Age of Discovery; later used of the black-and-white Great Auk, which bred on the island; ‘Mackerel and penguin: International Words of the North Atlantic,’ NOWELE 56-57 (2009): 41-52.
Perceval personal name popularized by Arthurian romance, apparently < Old French perce-val ‘pierce-valley’ but more surely ultimately traceable to a Welsh name with glin ’knee’(e.g., Gwan-glin ‘Pierced knee’), misunderstood in the transmission of the tale of this young hero as glyn ‘valley’. In the symbolism inherited from the common Indo-European culture, a ‘pierced knee’ would represent dysfunctional relations between generations or even failure to produce progeny, with the knee seen as the archetypical articulated joint (cf. Perceval’s likely uncle, the crippled Fisher King); ‘An Archaic Tale-Type Determinant of Chrétien’s Fisher King and Grail,’ Arthuriana 21:2 (2012): 85-101.
pernickety, (U.S.) persnickety, originally Scottish, < Anglo-French and medieval French par niceté ‘out of foolishness’, later ‘out of fastidiousness’ (cf. shifting significations of medieval and modern English nice); ‘Pernickety,’Scottish Language 20 (2010): 87-90.
pig Old English *picga, *pigga, with a variety of cognates only in Netherlandic and northern German dialects (bagge, bigge, pogge, etc., all meaning ‘young pig’), < Gaulish moccos ‘pig’, Moccos, a pig god, and/or Baco, another Celtic porcine divinity; ‘Speculations on Sub-Stratum Influence on Early English Vocabulary: pig, colt, frog,’Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (forthcoming).
pigs and whistles now understood as ‘fragments, odds and ends’, originally pig ‘earthenware pot’ and wissel ‘alternating assumption of responsibility’, such as for the cost of a round of drinks in a tavern (cf. Old English wrixl ‘exchange’ and the originally rare but now commonplace pub name, The Pig and Whistle). With the loss of initial meaning, such phrases as pig’s whistle, pig’s whisper were generated; ‘Pigs and Whistles,’ ANQ 25 (2012): 75-77.
pimp as procurer and manager of a prostitute; orginally an errand boy, then various kinds of intermediary, eventually a pander or procurer (cognate with German Pimpf young lad’).
pixie cf. Cornish-English piskie, Cornish pystry, pystyc ‘witchcraft’ < Old British (Brittonic) *piski ‘witchcraft’ < Latin fascinum ‘witchcraft, bewitching’, under the influence of Latin bascanum < Greek baskanion ‘witchcraft’; ‘Some Disputed Etymologies: kidney, piskie/pixie, tatting and slang,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 172-79.
pun < Anglo-French puint, Middle English punct (in separate developments of Latin punctum), in a jurisprudential context = the matter at issue, an item, legal provision, possibly influenced by Irish puinn (itself borrowed from French or English), introduced to the life about town of early 17 c. London as the debatable point, the word or idea played with (cf. carwitchet).
queer < early modern Irish cuar ‘crooked, bowed, bent’ and Hiberno-English quair ‘misaligned, improperly realized’, frequent in nautical applications; ‘The Etymology of queer,’ANQ 18 (2005): 15-18.
rant as ‘an extravagant, bombastic, or declamatory speech or utterance‘ (OED), early represented in Scots as ‘boisterous, festive occasion’; < Old Norse hrang ‘noise, din, tumult’, hraní ‘blusterer’, hranaskapr ‘uncivil behavior’, and possibly hrandlan ‘tossing about’.
rivet medieval Norman French *rive, *rivet < Old Norse hrífa ‘to take hold, grip’; ‘The Etymology of rivet,’ Notes and Queries 59 (2012): 488-90.
salmagundi in the seventeenth century a spicy dish of mixed meats or fish; from late fifteenth or later French salmigondis, a compound derived from salamine ‘a fish dish’ or salaminée, a related sauce (on the Latin roots sal ‘salt’ or salsus ‘salty’) + condin < French condir ‘to season, spice’; the English semantics influenced by earlier loans to Middle English of salomene, salmene, fish and meat dishes, broths, and sauces; ‘Salmagundi,’ Notes and Queries 59 (2012): 335-37.
scone < Scots Gaelic sgonn ‘block, divisible mass’, e.g., loaf, cake (cf. Irish scoth- ‘cut’ < Indo-European *skeu- ‘to cut’ < *sek- ‘to cut’); ‘Scones, the OED, and the Celtic Element of English Vocabulary,’ Notes and Queries 52 (2005): 447-50.
scrod,escrod a young cod of less than three pounds (U.S.), < Old Norse þorskr ‘cod’, via medieval Norman French *escrot, *escrod, the result of metathesis (/skrot/) + epenthetical e- before the resulting initial consonant cluster; ‘Some Fishy Etymologies: Eng. cod, Norse þorskr, Sp. bacalao, Du. kabeljauw,’ NOWELE 41 (2002): 17-30.
scullion < Anglo-French escuieler < Late Latin scutellarius < scutela ‘salver’, reformed with the suffix of Anglo-French cuistron ‘cook’s boy’; ‘Scullions, Cook’s Knaves, and Drudges,’ Notes and Queries 56: 4 (2009): 499-502.
selvage also selvedge ‘the edge of a piece of woven material finished in such a manner as to prevent the ravelling out of the weft’ (OED), understood as self + edge; counterpart in early modern Dutch selfegghe (modern Dutch zelfegge) with Low German cognates, but plausibly a loan or loan translation into English as a consequence of Henry I’s policy of bringing Flemish weavers to England in the twelfth century; ‘Selvage‘, Notes and Queries (forthcoming)‘
sham 18 c. London slang, < Irish seama ‘deceptive speech, rigamarole’; ‘Some “Alsatian” Etymologies from Eighteenth-Century London,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 79-83.
shellacking ‘a , drubbing’ (U.S.), < Irish siollaireacht ‘beating, smiting’, adapted from the speech of Irish immigrants but influenced, via folk etymology, by to shellac ‘to apply a coat of lac’; from the noun shellac, a loan translation of French lac en écailles; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
shenanigans from Irish sean ‘old, habitual’ + anachain ‘harm, damage, accident’, for a familiar meaning like ‘old tricks’; first recorded in North American English in California in about 1850; ‘A Miscellany of English Etymologies with Some Thoughts on Isolates and Loans’ (under review).
shoat a weaned piglet, less than a year of age, < Middle English shoden ‘to separate’ < Old English sceotan (cf. modern English shed, also < sceotan), in the technical sense of separating (weaning) the young of domestic animals from their dams; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
shuck the husk of an ear of corn, < colonial Spanish hoja de choclo ‘husk of maize’ < Quechua chuqllu, reinforced by Spanish chala ‘husk’; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
shyster an unprofessional or tricky lawyer; < Irish seist ‘talk, speech; tumult, bustle’ + Irish agent suffix–aire to give *seistaire ‘spokesperson, advocate’ (or with the English agent suffix –ster; cf. gangster, mobster); ‘A Miscellany of English Etymologies with Some Thoughts on Isolates and Loans’ (under review).
slang originally self-referential, the in-group speech of petty criminals, prostitutes, tavern owners, entertainers, etc. in the Whitefriars district of 18 c. London, < early modern Irish gnás ‘companionship, frequentation, custom, usage, manner’ (cf. gnásbearla ‘current speech’, gnásfhocal ‘an habitual phrase’), recast anagrammaticallly (with sl- for s-) according to the encrypting procedures of Shelta, the language of the Irish travelers; ‘Some Disputed Etymologies: kidney, piskie/pixie, tatting, and slang,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 172-79.
spatchcock freshly killed young fowl split and grilled, < Irish spochaim or spothaim ‘I cut’, cf. past participles spochta, spot (Hiberno-English spate) ‘eunuch’ + Irish coc ‘cock, young bird’, > *spocht-choc; variant (?) in spitchcock, used of cut grilled eel; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
spree < Scots spree/spray ‘uninhibited behavior’, e.g., drinking bout, < Scots Gaelic spraic ‘argument, disturbance’ < Old Irish spraic ‘rebuke, vigor’, the semantic focus shifting from speech acts to other forms of often garrulous social action; ‘Two Etymologies: spree and jinx,’Scottish Language (forthcoming).
spunk originally ‘tinder’, < Irish sponnc < Latin spongia ‘sponge’; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
spurtle in Scots English a wooden stirring stick for oatmeal porridge; < Old Norse sproti ‘sprout, twig, stick, rod’, with metathesis of the –r- and the addition of a conventional English-language suffix, Scottish Language (forthcoming).
squeamish < Norman and Anglo-French escoymus, with a similar range of meanings, ultimately from Old Norse skömm ‘shame’, the concern for honor gradually becoming one for societal decency and bodily purity; ‘Squeamish’ (forthcoming).
steak judged a loan from Old Norse steik (cf. English to stoke) but the presence of the same loan in medieval Irish (staic) allows of the possibility that Scandinavian settlers in the future Danelaw in central and eastern England may have had affiliations with Norse settlements in Ireland.
steward traditionally derived from a hypothetical Old English *stig-weard, in which stig, more commonly ‘ladder’, would mean ‘hall’, completed by weard ‘guardian’; a preferable derivation is more directly from OE sti, the antecedent of modern English sty (as in pig-sty), in generic terms an enclosed structure with a forecourt and roofed section. The steward would then initially have been the keeper of the entrance to the lord’s hall; ‘Stew, sty and steward,’ Notes and Queries 63 (2013): 373-76.
storey < Anglo-French estor ‘store-house, stock’, with a shift in semantics from the function of lofts over ground-floor rooms to the the architectural feature of addiitonal full-sizelevels in a building; ‘A Miscellany of English Etymologies with Some Thoughts on Isolates and Loans’ (under review).
syllabub as milk curdled with wine or cider, and sweetened and flavored; initially a northern British term < Old Norse sil ‘strainer’ + bub, originally a term for a mixture of meal and yeast with warm wort and water, used to promote fermentation. An original *silebub then experienced many differing spellings, concluding with syllabub under the influence of syllable.
tango < Spanish Arabic tahanjul ‘dancing’, via Andalusian tanguillo, a dance from Cadiz, whence the back-formed simplex, tango; ‘Identity Politics, Lexicography, and the Etymology of tango–una vez más,’ Romance Notes 53: 2 (2013): 155-164.
thivel in Scots English a wooden stirring stick for oatmeal porridge (cf. spurtle); < reconstructed Old Norse *þefill ‘pot stick’, based on þefja ‘to thicken (by cooking)’; Scottish Language (forthcoming).
tinker English tin (for Scots Gaelic stain) + Scots Gaelic caird ‘craftsman’; ‘The Etymology of tinker, with a note on tinker’s dam,’ English Language Notes 39:2 (2001): 10-12.
train as train oil or whale oil, loan to Middle English of a derivative in medieval Dutch &/or Low German of early Germanic *trannjan ‘to separate’, not, as popularly believed, < Dutch traan ‘tear, drop’; ‘Whalemen’s Words: harpoon, try-works, train-oil’, The Mariner’s Mirror‘ (forthcoming).
twig as in ‘to twig to something’, earlier ‘to twig’ (intransitive), ‘to twig someone’ (transitive), < early modern Irish tuigim ‘I understand, discern, recognize’, influenced by English twig as in in fine twig ‘dressed up, dressed according to one’s station’, this in turn < early modern Irish tuighe ‘thatch, cover’, tuigeann ‘cloak, distinctive dress’, both uses of twig originally from Irish-influenced eighteenth-century underclass London slang; ‘Challenges Facing English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations,’ Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
vagrant < Norman French vaguer ‘to wander’ (< three sources: Latin vagari ‘to wander’; Latin vacuare ‘to be absent’; and Old Norse vaga ‘to wag, waddle’), with an intrusive -r- from Norman waucrer (< Old Norse válka ‘to toss about’ [of a ship]); ‘More Nautical Etymologies,’ Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 31-42, and ‘Three Verbs in a Boat: Conflation in Anglo-Norman Lexis and Lexicography’, Neophilologus (97 (2013): 469-463.
winch < Old English wincian ‘to wink, nod’ < Indo-European *uengh- ‘to be curved, move on a curve’, an extended meaning, in which alternating motion is replaced by rotary motion; ‘Capstan, Windlass and Winch, Hoist, Haul and Tow,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 465-73.
windlass < Old Norse vindáss ‘winding beam’, influenced by Old Norse hlass ‘load’, Middle English last ‘load’; ‘Capstan, Windlass and Winch, Hoist, Haul and Tow,’ Notes and Queries 57 (2010): 465-73.
FRAUGHT WORDS
Relisted here are etymological studies of words that have come to be closely associated with national or community identity, so that speakers feel that they have a stake in an explanation that is ‘acceptable’ to the community, one consistent with its view of itself. At the same time these are words for which popular explanations often tend to be numerous and contradictory, since so much is riding on them. This said, the author claims no special expertise in the mentalities of nationalism, at one end of the scale, or of in-groups at the other. Although these and comparable words are of considerable interest for the history of linguistic scholarship in and about the communities concerned, the studies listed below are organized along the axis of historical linguistics.
The Etymology of tinker, with a note on tinker’s dam. English Language Notes 39: 2 (2001): 10-12.
Swagger and Sashay: An Etymology for Spanish majo/maja. Romance Notes 44 (2004): 293-98.
The Etymology of queer. ANQ 18 (2005): 15-18.
Scones, the OED, and the Celtic Element in English Vocabulary. Notes & Queries 52 (2005): 447-50.
The Etymology of Iroquois: ‘Killer People’ in a Basque-Algonquian Pidgin or an Echo of Norse Irland it mikla ‘Greater Ireland’? Onomastica Canadiana 88 (2006): 43-56.
Spanish flamenco: Origin, Loan Translation, and In- and Out-group Evolution (Romani, Caló, Castilian). Romance Notes 48 (2007): 13-22.
Mexican mano and vato: Romani and Caló Origins. JOLLAS: Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 3:1 (2008): 94-103.
The Genealogy of the Haggis. Miscelánea 39 (2009): 103-10.
An Unnoticed Early Attestation of gringo ‘foreigner’: Implications for Its Origin. Bulletin of Spanish Studies 86:3 (2009): 323-30.
Identity Politics, Lexicography, and the Etymology of tango–una vez más. Romance Notes 53: 2 (2013): 155-164.
The Names Scyld, Scef, Beow, Beowulf: Shares into Swords. English Studies (2016).
Norse Loki as Praxonym. Journal of Literary Onomastics 5.1 (2016): 17-28. http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/jlo/vol5/iss1/2.
National Identity and Lexis: Scottish plaid and tartan. Scottish Language 38 (2019): 74-81.
Old Norse víking: Etymology, Semantics, Semiotics. Journal of Indo-European Studies 47.3-4 (2019): 507-519.
Identity Politics and Vocabulary: Scottish plaid and tartan. Scottish Language 38 (2019): 74-81.
Honky-tonk: Lexicogenesis and Etymology. ANQ (December, 2019).
The Etymolology of jazz: One More Time. ANQ (January, 2020).
The Chromatics of the Blues. ANQ (March 2020).
The Etymology of dyke and bull-dyke. ANQ (September, 2021).
Drag, drag queen: Speculations on Origins. ANQ (November, 2021).
Mexican Slang ese “dude, buddy” and its Iberian Caló-Romani Antecedents. Studia Linguistica Universitatis IagellonicaeCracoviensis 138 (2021): 135-143.
The Etymology of faggot and its Historical Tie to Heresy. ANQ (January, 2022).
Shetland: An Ecological Etymology. The New Shetlander 300 (2023): 41-42.
The Old Norse Toponym Grænland and its Tie to the Trade in Walrus Ivory. Under review.
OTHER SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATIONS
Discussion (with Lois Bragg) of the tailoring term sloper, published under the title “From the etymological sleuths” in Threads 84 (Summer, 1999).
An etymological note on the name Galtachan for a string of skerries west of the Shiant Isles in the Hebrides, posted to the Guestbook at www.shiantisles.net, March, 2002.
Barbozettes. The Mariner’s Mirror 90 (2004): 105.
Horse Latitudes. The Mariner’s Mirror 90 (2004): 473-75.
Certificate of Servitude. The Mariner’s Mirror 91 (2005): 103.
So You Want to be a Translator. Kaleidoscope (Cornell University Library, August, 2005), online.
Dutch Admirals: Readers’ Replies. Notes and Queries 53 (2006): 360-61.
Sounds. Readers’ Replies. The Mariner’s Mirror 97 (2010).
East India Company Lacks. Readers’ Replies. The Mariner’s Mirror 99 (2013), online.
TRANSLATIONS
Ulla-Bell Thorin, Robbed of Language [Berövat Språk] (unpublished; manuscript seized in a Swedish bankruptcy case).
Horst Biesold, Crying Hands: Eugenics and the Deaf in Nazi Germany [Klagende Hände: Betroffenheit und Spätfolgen in bezug auf Das Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses, dargestellt am Beispiel der ‘Taubstummen’], Washington: Gallaudet University Press, 1999.
Henri-Jacques Stiker, A History of Disability [Corps infirmes et sociétés], Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. 2nd ed., 2019.
Henri Gaillard, Gaillard in Deaf America: A Portrait of the Deaf Community, 1917 [Mission des sourds-muets français aux États-Unis], Washington: Gallaudet University Press, 2002.
Sylvie Courtine-Denamy, The House of Jacob [La Maison de Jacob: La langue pour seule patrie], Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Daniel Dubuisson, The Western Construction of Religion [L’Occident et la religion], Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
Adam Rayski, The Choice of the Jews under Vichy: Between Submission and Resistance [Le choix des Juifs sous Vichy: entre soumission et résistance], Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, in collaboration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2005. 2nd ed. 2019.
Gerhart M. Riegner, Never Despair [Ne jamais désespérer: soixante années au service du peuple juif et des droits de l’homme], Chicago: Ivan Dee, in collaboration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2006.
Gregor Sarrazin, Three Studies Relating to Beowulf and Lejre 1886-1910 [translated from German]. In Beowulf and Lejre, ed. John Niles (Tempe, Arizona: ACMRS, 2006). Pp. 435-47.
Emil Cioran, Îndreptar Patimaş (The Passionate Handbook), Opening pages. Inventory: The Princeton Journal of Translation 4 (2013): 50-55.
Excerpt from the fifteenth-century Irish tale, Cath Finntrágha (The Battle of Ventry). Inventory: The Princeton Journal of Translation 7 (2017).
Franz Kafka, Before the Law (Vor dem Gesetz). Inventory: The Princeton Journal of Translation 8 (2018).
Walter Pohl, The Avars: A Steppe Empire in Central Europe, 567–822. Cornell University Press (2018).
Egill Skallagrímsson, Sonatorrek – The Grievous Loss of Sons. Inventory: A Journal of Translation (Princeton University) 9 (2019): 39-44.
The Fox as Dying Hero: A New Edition and Translation of Skaufhala bálkr, with Haukur Þorgeirsson. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies (November, 2023).
Emil Cioran, Amurgul gîndurilor (The Twlight of Thoughts), Part I, English translation and commentary. Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature.
BOOK REVIEWS
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Tranter, Stephen N. Clavis Metrica: Háttatal, Háttalykill and the Irish Metrical Tracts. Scandinavian Studies 70 (1998): 405-07.
Crumlin-Pedersen, Ole. Viking-Age Ships and Shipbuilding in Hedeby/Haithabu and Schleswig. Scandinavian Studies 71 (1999): 243.
Grundmann, Mike. Face First. Disability Studies Quarterly 19 (2000): 433.
Le Maire, Bernard. Joseph Henrion: Premier professeur sourd de Belgique. DHI Newsletter 12 (2001): 13-14.
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Bolens, Guillemette, La Logique du Corps Articulaire. History of Religions 43 (2003): 164-66.
Jesch, Judith, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse. Scandinavian Studies 75 (2003): 446-50.
Ridel, Élizabeth, ed. L’Héritage Maritime des Vikings en Europe de l’Ouest. Scandinavian Studies 75 (2003): 618-20.
Crumlin-Pedersen, Ole, and Olaf Olsen, eds. The Skuldelev Ships I: Topography, History, Conservation and Display. Scandinavian Studies 76 (2004): 87-89.
Delamarre, Xavier. Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise: une approche linguistique du vieux-celtique continental. RREO (2004).
Katz, Eileen, and Celeste Cheyney, “Making Sense of It All: The Battle of Britain Through a Jewish Deaf Girl’s Eyes,” in Deaf Women’s Lives: Three Self-Portraits, ed. Brenda Jo Brueggeman, Deaf History International Newsletter 26 (Spring, 2005): 3.
Sigurðsson, Gísli. The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse on Method Scandinavian Studies 77 (2005): 410-13.
Arend, Elisabeth. Lachen und Komik in Giovanni Boccaccios Decameron. Heliotropia 3.1-2 (2006), web.
Caskey, Jill. Art and Patronage in the Medieval Medieterranean: Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi, Annali d’Italianistica 24 (2006): 366-67.
McTurk, Rory. Chaucer and the Norse and Celtic Worlds. Saga-Book for Northern Research 30 (2006): 139-42.
Østergård, Else. Woven into the Earth: Textiles from Norse Greenland. The Medieval Review (June 6, 2006), web.
Phaethon’s Children: The Este Court and its Culture in Early Ferrara, eds. Dennis Looney and Deanna Shemek. Annali d’Italianistica 24 (2006): 380-82.
Ulysses on Montmartre: An Earlier Ulysses in Another Nightown, A French shadow play (1910), its translation, and an essay on its relation to Joyce’s Ulysses, by Akram Midani and Erwin R. Steinberg. James Joyce Quarterly 44 (2006): 173-76.
Renaissance Florence, A Social History. Eds Roger J. Crum, and John T. Paoletti. Forum Italicum 41 (2007): 553-55.
Robert de Clari. La Conquête de Constatinople, ed. and trans. Peter Noble. The Medieval Review (2007), web.
Godard, Alain, and Marie-Françoise Piéjus, eds. Espaces, histoire et imaginaire dans la culture italienne de la Renaissance. Annali d’Italianistica 26 (2008): 472-74.
Hagedorn, Suzanne C. Abandoned Women: Rewriting the Classics in Dante, Boccaccio, & Chaucer. Heliotropia 5 (2008), web.
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Florence and Beyond: Culture, Society and Politics in Renaissance Italy: Essays in Honor of John J. Najemy, ed. David S. Peterson with Daniel E. Bornstein. Annali d’Italianistica 27 (2009): 386-88.
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Bolens, Guillemette. Le style des gestes: corporéité et kinésie dans le récit littéraire. The Medieval Review, web (March, 2010).
Kingston, Simon. Ulster and the Isles in the Fifteenth Century: The Lordship of the Clann Domhnaill of Antrim. Arthuriana 20 (2010): 103-04.
O’Connell, Monique. Men of Empire. Power and Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State. Annali d’Italianistica 28 (2010): 479-81.
Sobecki, Sebastian I. The Sea in Medieval English Literature. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 109.2 (2010): 230-31.
Döden som straff: glömda gravar på Galgbacken. Ed. Maria Jansén. Linköping: Östergötlands länsmuseum, 2009. Mediaevistik 24 (2011), 617-19.
The Good Wife’s Guide: Le Ménagier de Paris. Trans. Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose. Petits Propos Culinaires 90 (2011).
Les Lais bretons moyen-anglais. Eds Colette Stévanovitch and Anne Mathieu. Mediaevistik 24 (2011), 642-51.
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Plaisance, Michel. Florence in the Time of the Medicis: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Forum Italicum 45: 2 (2011): 531-32.
Wagner, Thomas G. Die Seuchen der Kreuzzüge: Krankheit und Krankenpflege auf den bewaffneten Pilgerfahrten ins Heilige Land. Mediaevistik 24 (2011), 569-72.
The Arthur of Medieval Latin Literature. Ed. Siân Echard. Arthuriana 22 (2012): 102-04.
Bek-Pedersen, Karen. The Norns in Old Norse Mythology. Scandinavian Studies 84 (2012): 225-28.
Coski, Christopher. From Barbarism to Universality: Language and Identity in Early Modern France. Dalhousie French Studies (2012).
Findeisen, Jörg-Peter. Vinland: Die Entdeckungsfahrten der Wikinger von Island nach Grönland und Amerika. Mediaevistik 25 (2012): 332-33.
Joseph Falaky Nagy (ed), Identifying the ‘Celtic’; Joseph Falaky Nagy (ed), Myth in Celtic literatures; Joseph F. Eska (ed), Law, literature and society: Christina Chance, Aled Llion Jones, Matthieu Boyd, Edyta Lehmann-Shriver & Sarah Zeiser (ed), Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 26–27. Peritia – Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland 22-23 (2011-2012): 387-401.
Beckwith, Christopher I. Warriors of the Cloisters: The Central Asia Origins of Science in the Medieval World (2012).Mediaevistik 26 (2013): 357-59.
Bonnetain, Yvonne S. Loki – Beweger der Geschichten. Mediaevistik 26 (2013): 335-37.
The Gaelic Finn Tradition. Eds Sharon J. Arbuthnot and Geraldine Parsons. Mediaevistik 26 (2013): 339-41.
Mac Cana, Proinsias. The Cult of the Sacred Centre: Essays on Celtic Ideology. Studia Hibernica 39 (2013): 155-170.
Pringle, Denys. Churches, Castles and Landscape in the Frankish East. Mediaevistik 26 (2013): 382-84.
Bhreathnach, Edel. Ireland in the Medieval World, AD 400-1000: Landscape, Kingship and Religion, Dublin: Four Courts, 2014. Mediaevistik 27 (2014): 290-291.
Celtic-Norse Relationships in the Irish Sea in the Middle Ages 800-1200. Mediaevistik 27 (2014): 180-181.
Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier: A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia. Eds Marek Tamm, Linda Kaljundi, and Carsten Selch Jensen. Mediaevistik 27 (2014): 351-356.
Ahronson, Kristján, Into the Ocean: Vikings, Irish, and Environmental Change in Iceland and the North.Mediaevistik 28 (2015): 457-458.
The Medieval Way of War: Studies in Medieval Military History in Honor of Bernard S. Bachrach. Ed. Gregory I. Halfond. Ashgate, 2015. Mediaevistik 28 (2015): 422-423.
Minni and Munnin: Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture. Eds Hermann, Mitchell, and Arnórsdóttir. The Medieval Review (January, 2015), web.
Anglo-français: philologie et linguistique. Oreste Floquet and Gabriele Giannini, eds, Series: Civilisation médiévale, 13, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015, The Medieval Review (August, 2016), web.
Marriage Disputes: A Fragmentary Old-Irish Law Text, ed. Fergus Kelly, Early Irish Law Series 6, DIAS, 2014, Eolas 9 (2016): 104-106.
The Anglo-Norman Lay of “Haveloc”: Text and Translation, Glyn S. Burgess and Leslie C. Cook, ed. and trans., Gallica 37. Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2015. Speculum 92:4 (October 2017): 1163-1164.
Medeltidens genus: kvinnors och mäns roller inom kultur, rätt och samhälle: Norden och Europa ca 300-1500. Lars Hermanson and Auður Magnúsdóttir, eds. Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2016. The Medieval Review, April, 2017, web.
Lyle, Emily B. Ten Gods: A New Approach to Defining the Mythological Structures of the Indo-Europeans, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2012, Mediaevistik 28 (2015).
Nouveau dictionnaire historique des locutions: Ancien français – moyen français – Renaissance, comp. Giuseppe Di Stefano, Mediaevistik 29 (2016): 329-330.
Sacred Histories: A Festschrift for Máire Herbert, John Carey, Kevin Murray & Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, eds, Dublin: Four Courts Press, November 2015, Mediaevistik 29 (2016).
Kleingärtner, Sunhild, Die Wikinger und ihre Schiffe, Theiss Verlag, 2017. Mediaevistik 31 (2018): 387-388.
Olsen, Karin E. Conceptualizing the Enemy in Early Northwest Europe: Metaphors of Conflict and Alterity in Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse, and Early Irish Poetry. Mediaevistik 31 (2018): 398-399.
Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages: Poetry in fornaldarsögur, Margaret Clunies Ross, ed., Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, Vol. 8, Brepols, 2017. Mediaevistik 31 (2018): 399-400.
Theorizing Old Norse Myth, Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson, eds, Brepols, 2017, Mediaevistik 31 (2018): 371-372.
Williams, Tara, Middle English Marvels: Magic, Spectacle, and Morality in the Fourteenth Century, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018. Magic, Ritual and Witchcraft 13 (3) (2018): 500-50.
Egeler, Mattias, Islands in the West: Classical Myth and the Medieval Norse and Irish Geographical Imagination, Brepols, 2017. The Medieval Review (February, 2019). Web.
Eska, Charlene M., A Raven’s Battle-cry: The Limits of Judgment in the Medieval Irish Legal Tract Anfuigell, Brill, 2019. Mediaevistik (2020).
Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches. Jürg Glauser, Pernille Hermann, and Stephen A. Mitchell, eds, de Gruyter, 2019. Mediaevistik 32 (2020).
The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and North Sea, Charles MacQuarrie and Joseph Falaky Nagy, eds, Amersterdam Universtiy Press, 2019. Mediaevistik 32 (2020).
Poetry from Treatises on Poetics, K. E. Gade and E. Marold, eds, Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, Volume 3, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Mediaevistik 32 (2020).
Price, Neil. S. Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings. New York: Basic Books, 2020. Mediaevistik 33 (2020): 433-434.
Rousseau, André. Manuel approfondi de la langue gotique. Honoré Champion, 2020. Mediaevistik 33 (2020): 435-436.
Birkett, Thomas. Reading the Runes in Old English and Old Norse Poetry, Routledge, 2017. The Medieval Review (January, 2021).
Social Norms in Medieval Scandinavia, Jochymek, Bartusik, and Morawiec, eds.,2021. The Medieval Review (fSeptember, 2021).
Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns, eds. Steven P. Ashby and Søren M. Sindbaek, Oxford: Oxbow Books,. TMR (January, 2022).
Myth, Magic, and Memory in Early Scandinavian Narrative Culture, Studies in Honour of Stephen A. Mitchell, ed. Jürg Glausner and Pernille Hermann, Brepols, 2021. TMR.
A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre, Massimiliano Bampi, Carolyne Larrington, and Síf Rikhardsdóttir, eds, Boydell and Brewer, 2020. Mediaevistik 35 (2023): 290-291.
Davy, Gilduin, La Saga des diseurs de loi: Esquisse juridique de l’Islande médiévale, Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021. Mediaevistik 35 (2023): 377-378
Frisians of the Early Middle Ages, John Hines and Nelleke Ijssennagger-van der Pluijm, eds., Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology, 10. Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 2021. Mediaevistik 35 (2023): 421-422.
Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age. Irene García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart, eds. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe. (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2020, Mediaevistik 35 (2023): 378-379.
Saints and Their Legacies in Medieval Iceland, Kirsten Wolf and Dario Bulitta, eds, Boydell & Brewer, 2021. Mediaevistik 35 (2023): 301-302.
Eska, Charlene M. Lost and Found in Early Irish Law, Medieval Law and Its Practice, Volume 36, Brill, 2022.Mediaevistik 36 (2023).
Poetry in Sagas of Icelanders, Margaret Clunies Ross, Kari Ellen Gade, Tarrin Wills (eds), Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages, vol. 5, Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. Mediaevistik 36 (2023).
Hermann, Pernille, Mnemonic Echoing in Old Norse Sagas and Eddas,Mediaevistik 36 (2023).
Ireland, Colin A. The Gaelic Background of Old English Poetry Before Bede, Mediaevistik 36 (2023).
Meylan, Nicolas. The Pagan Earl: Hákon Sigur∂arson and the Medieval Construction of Old Norse Religion. The Viking Collection: Studies in Northern Civilization. Odense, Denmark: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2022. The Medieval Review, 2024.
Medieval Glossaries from North-Western Europe, ed. Seiler, Benati, and Pons-Sanz, Brepols, 2023 (in progress).
Mitchell, Stephen A., Old Norse Folklore: Tradition, Innovation, and Performance in Medieval Scandinavia, Cornell Univdersity Press, 2023 (in progress).
Sims-Williams, Patrick, ed., The Medieval Welsh Englyniony Beddau (in progress).
21 January, 2025
Comments and questions are welcome at ws36@cornell.edu or 200 Kidd Castle Way, Apt. 120, Webster, NY 14580, USA. Institutional contact through the Graduate Program in Medieval Studies, Cornell University, medievalst@cornell.edu, 607-255-8545.
Drangey, northern Iceland, last refuge of Grettir the Strong. See Teithi Hen, Gúaire mac Áedáin, Grettir Ásmundarson: The King’s Debility, the Shore, the Blade, Studia Celtica 41 (2007): 161-69. Charcoal sketch by Clara Jane Timme.
CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING, 1964-2025
Rummaret de Wenelande: A Geographic Note to Wace’s Brut. Romance Philology 18 (1964): 46‑53.
The Beginnings and Early Development of Old French Historiography. Doctoral dissertation. University of California at Berkeley, 1966. Dissertation Abstracts 27 (1967): 3850A‑B.
The Patronage of La Conquête d’Irlande. Romance Philology 21 (1967): 34‑41.
Three Charioteering Gifts in Mesca Ulad and Táin Bó Cúalnge: immorchor ṅdelend, foscul ṅdírich, léim dar boilg. Ériu 32 (1981): 163‑67.
Bisclavret in Marie de France: A Reply. Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies 4 (1982): 77‑82.
Conall’s Welcome to Cet in Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó. Florilegium 4 (1982): 100‑08.
The Jongleur Taillefer at Hastings: Antecedents and Literary Fate. Viator 14 (1983): 77‑88.
Martial Feats in the Old Irish Ulster Cycle. Canadian Journal of Irish Studies 9 (1983): 45‑80.
The Old Irish Bóand/Nechtan Myth in the Light of Scandinavian Evidence. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 1 (1983): 63‑78.
‘Go West, Young Man’: An Anglo‑Norman Chronicle in 13th Century Ireland. Florilegium 6 (1984): 119‑36.
Old Irish Fert, ‘Tie‑pole’, Fertas ‘Swingletree’, and the Seeress Fedelm. Études Celtiques 21 (1984): 171‑83.
Fergus and the Cosmogonic Sword. History of Religions 25 (1985): 30‑56.
Gilbogus in Manx Latin: Celtic or Norse Origin? Celtica 17 (1985): 29‑32.
Konungs skuggsjá: Irish Marvels and the King’s Justice. Scandinavian Studies 57 (1985): 147‑61.
The Mythology of Loch Neagh. Mankind Quarterly 26 (1985): 111‑35.
The Smith and the Hero: Culann and Cú Chulainn. Mankind Quarterly 25 (1985): 227‑60.
Bargaining for the Life of Bres in Cath Maige Tuired. Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 34 (1986): 26-40.
Mani Maidi an Nem … : Ringing Changes on a Cosmic Motif. Ériu 37 (1986): 99‑117.
The Bound and the Binding: The Lyre in Early Ireland. In Proceedings of the First North American Congress of Celtic Studies, 1986. Ed. Gordon W. MacLennan. Ottawa: Chair of Celtic Studies, University of Ottawa, 1988. Pp. 365‑85.
Cerrce, an Archaic Epithet of the Dagda, Cernnunos, and Conall Cernach. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 16 (1988): 341-64.
Irish Evidence for the De Harmonia Tonorum of Wulfstan of Winchester. Mediaevalia 14 (1988): 23-38.
An Irish Perspective on Ibn Falān’s Description of Rūs Funeral Ceremonial. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 16 (1988): 173-81.
Kjartan’s Choice: The Irish Disconnection in the Sagas of the Icelanders. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 3 (1988): 89-114.
Ludarius: Slang and Symbol in the Life of St. Máedóc of Ferns. Studia Monastica 30 (1988): 291-304.
Portraits of the Ruler: Óláfr pái Hǫskuldsson and Cormac mac Airt. The Journal of Indo-European Studies 17 (1989): 77-97.
A Schoolmaster’s June Day Walk Round the City: Joyce and Strindberg’s Albert Blom. Studia Neophilologica 61 (1989): 183-92.
Warrior Initiation and Some Short Celtic Spears in the Irish and Learned Latin Traditions. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 11 (1989): 87-108.
Aweghost Stringbag in Finnegans Wake. The James Joyce Quarterly 27 (1990): 859-62.
A Cut Above: Ration and Station in an Irish King’s Hall. Food and Foodways 4 (1990): 89-110.
Images of Enchainment in the Hisperica Famina and Vernacular Irish Texts. Études Celtiques 27 (1990): 221-34.
An Irish Descriptive Topos in Laxdæla Saga. Scripta Islandica 41 (1990): 18-34.
The Motif of Wrestling in Early Irish and Mongolian Epic. Mongolian Studies 13 (1990): 153-68.
Sports Injuries and the Law in Early Ireland. Ludi Medi Ævi 2 (1990): 4-5.
The Three Wounds: Tripartition as Narrrative Tool in Ireland and Iceland. Incognita: International Journal for Cognitive Studies in the Humanities 1 (1990): 50-90.
Úath mac Imomain (Fled Bricrend), Óðinn, and Why the Green Knight is Green. Mankind Quarterly 30 (1990): 307-16.
Weather Gods, Syncretism and the Eastern Baltic. Temenos: Studies in Comparative Religion 26 (1990): 105-14.
Women’s Work and Words: Setting the Stage for Strife in Medieval Irish and Icelandic Narrative. Mankind Quarterly 31 (1990): 59-86.
Airdrech, Sirite and Other Early Irish Battlefield Spirits. Éigse 25 (1991): 45-55.
Clontarf, and the Irish Destinies of Earl Sigurðr of Orkney and Þorsteinn Síðu‑Hallsson. Scandinavian Studies 63 (1991): 164-86.
Cú Chulainn, the Heroic Imposition of Meaning on Signs, and the Revenge of the Sign. Incognita: International Journal for Cognitive Studies in the Humanities 2 (1991): 79-105.
Early Irish Attitudes Towards Hair and Beards, Baldness and Tonsure. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 44 (1991): 154-89.
Serial Defamation in Two Medieval Tales: Icelandic Ölkofra þáttr and Irish Scéla Mucce Meic Dathó. Oral Tradition 6 (1991): 35-57.
Textual Notes on Descriptions of the Old Irish Chariot and Team. Studia Celtica Japonica 4 (1991): 15-35.
Anglo-Norman Verse on New Ross and its Founder. Irish Historical Studies 28 (1992): 113-23.
Bragi Boddason, the First Skald, and the Problem of Celtic Origins. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 5 (1992): 1-18.
Concepts of Eloquence in Tochmarc Emire. Studia Celtica 26/27 (1991-92): 125-54.
The Deficient Ruler as Avian Exile: Nebuchadnezzar and Suibhne Geilt. Ériu 43 (1992): 217-22.
Games, Sport and Para-Military Exercise in Early Ireland. Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature 10 (1992): 105-23.
Guin agus Crochad agus Gólad: The Earliest Irish Threefold Death. In Celtic Languages and Celtic Peoples: Proceedings of the Second North American Congress of Celtic Studies, Halifax, 1989. Eds Cyril Byrne, Margaret Harry and Pádraig Ó Siadhail. Halifax: D’Arcy McGee Chair of Irish Studies, St. Mary’s University, 1992. Pp. 65-82.
Gulliver’s Wounded Knee. Swift Studies 7 (1992): 106-09.
Norse Weaves and Irish Woolens: ME Falding. American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures 4 (1992): 43-54.
Scapulimancy in the Medieval Baltic. Journal of Baltic Studies 23 (1992): 57-62.
Sexual Identity, Cultural Integrity, Verbal and Other Magic in Some Episodes of Laxdæla saga and Kormáks saga. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 107 (1992): 131-55.
Soundboxes of the Divine: Hœnir, Sencha, Gwalchmai. Mankind Quarterly 33 (1992): 57-67.
Charting Conceptual Space: Dumézil’s Tripartition and the Fatal Hostel in Early Irish Literature. Mankind Quarterly 34 (1993): 27-64.
Irish Perspectives on Heimdallr. Alvíssmál 2 (1993): 3-30.
A Scurrilous Episode in Landnámabók: Tjǫrvi the Mocker. Maal og Minne (1993): 127-48.
Spiritual Navigation in the Western Sea: Sturlunga saga and Adomnán’s Hinba. Scripta Islandica 44 (1993): 30-42.
Steingerðr’s Nicknames for Bersi (Kormáks saga): Implications for Gender, Politics and Poetics. Florilegium 12 (1993): 33-54.
Vinland, the Irish, “Obvious Fictions and Apocrypha”. Skandinavistik 23 (1993): 1-15.
The Arctic Desert (Helluland) in Bárðar saga. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 7 (1994): 1-24.
Conventional Descriptions of the Horse in the Ulster Cycle. Études Celtiques 30 (1994): 233-49.
Deployment of an Irish Loan: ON verða at gjalti ‘to go mad with terror’. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 93 (1994): 151-76.
Diet and Fantasy in Eleventh-Century Ireland: The Vision of Mac Con Glinne. Food and Foodways 6 (1994): 1-17.
Management of the Celtic Fact in Landnámabók. Scandinavian Studies 66 (1994): 1-25.
Njáll’s Beard, Hallgerðr’s Hair and Gunnarr’s Hay: Homological Patterning in Njáls saga. TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek 15 (1994): 5-31.
Alien and Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders. In Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Pp. 242-63.
The Etymology and Semantics of Old Norse knǫrr ‘cargo ship’: The Irish and English Evidence. Scandinavian Studies 68 (1996): 279-90.
Homeric Echoes in Táin Bó Cúailnge? Emania 14 (1996): 65-73.
Principled Women, Pressured Men: Nostalgia in Fljótsdæla saga. Reading Medieval Studies 22 (1996): 21-62.
Tripartition in the Early Irish Tradition: Cosmic or Social Structure? In Indo-European Religion after Dumézil. Ed. Edgar C. Polomé. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series 16. Washington: Institute for the Study of Man, 1996. Pp. 156-83.
Unique Nicknames in Landnámabók and the Sagas of the Icelanders: The Case of Þorleifr kimbi Þorbrandsson. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies / Études scandinaves au Canada 9 (1996): 48-71.
Contracting for Combat: Flyting and Fighting in Táin Bó Cúailnge. Emania 16 (1997): 49-62.
From Crown to Toe: Working the Wheel of Fortune in Medieval Scandinavia. Arachne 4 (1997): 123-59.
Governal ert en un esqoi: A Note on Béroul’s Roman de Tristan. Romance Quarterly 44 (1997): 195-99.
Gunnarr, his Irish Wolfhound Sámr, and the Passing of the Old Heroic Order in Njáls saga. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 112 (1997): 43-66.
Hostellers in Landnámabók: A Trial Irish Institution? Skáldskaparmál 4 (1997): 162-78.
Kingship and the Hero’s Flaw: Disfigurement as Ideological Vehicle in Early Irish Narrative. Disability Studies Quarterly 17 (1997): 263-67.
The Nickname of Bjǫrn buna and the Celtic Interlude in the Settlement of Iceland. Ainm 7 (1996-1997): 51-66.
Psychological Warfare in Vinland (Eiríks saga rauða). In Papers in Honor of Jaan Puhvel. 2 vols. Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph Series 20-21. Washington: Institute for the Study of Man, 1997. Vol. 2. Studies in Indo-European Mythology and Religion. Eds Edgar C. Polomé and John Greppin. Pp. 235-64.
Sexual Defamation in Medieval Iceland: gera meri ór einum ‘to make a mare of someone.’ NOWELE 30 (1997): 27-37.
C. S. Lewis and the Toponym Narnia. Mythlore 84 (1998): 54-55, 58.
The Etymology of Middle English oreven ‘oar blank.’ The Mariner’s Mirror 84 (1998): 322-25.
The Ship heiti in Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál. Scripta Islandica 49 (1998): 45-86.
Ancien judéo-français étupé ‘ayant un prépuce, incirconcis’: glose biblique – et insulte religieuse? Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 115 (1999): 234-43.
Blæju þöll – Young Fir of the Bed-Clothes: Skaldic Seduction. In Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Eds Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie. Newark: University of Delaware Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 1999. Pp. 31-49, 201-06.
Molly’s Monologue and the Old Woman’s Complaint in James Stephens’s The Crock of Gold. James Joyce Quarterly 36 (1999): 640-50.
Textual Evidence for Spilling Lines in the Rigging of Medieval Scandinavian Keels. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 28 (1999): 343-54.
A Treatise from Enlightenment Sweden on ‘Teaching the Mute to Read and Speak.’ The Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education 4 (1999): 321-30.
Two Nautical Etymologies: killick ‘small stone anchor’and drake ‘male duck.’ ANQ 12 (1999): 3-6.
Proust’s Prescription: Sickness as Pre-condition for Writing. Co-authored with Lois Bragg. Literature and Medicine 19 (2000): 165-81.
Dante’s Venetian Shipyard Scene (Inf. 21), Barratry, and Maritime Law. Quaderni d’Italianistica 22 (2001): 57-79.
The Etymology of tinker, with a note on tinker’s dam. English Language Notes 39: 2 (2001): 10-12.
A Norse Etymology for luff ‘the weather edge of the sail.’ The American Neptune 62:1 (2001): 111-17.
Old Norse Nautical Terminology in the ‘Sea-Runs’ of Middle Irish Narrative. In Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium of Societas Celtologica Nordica, Studia Celtologica Upsaliensia 4 (2001): 29-63.
Chaucer’s Shipman and the Law Marine. The Chaucer Review 37:2 (2002): 145-58.
The Dory on the Mosquito Coast and Grand Banks. The American Neptune 62:1 (2002): 111-17.
Joe Hill’s ‘Pie in the Sky’ and Swedish Reflexes of the Land of Cockaigne. American Speech 77 (2002): 331-36.
Malarkey and its Etymology. Western Folklore 61 (2002): 209-12.
Fracture and Containment in the Icelandic Skalds’ Sagas. Medieval Forum 3 (2003) at http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/Volume3/Sayers.html.
Gender Ambiguity in Late Medieval Iceland: Legal Framework and Saga Dynamics. Scandinavian Canadian Studies – Études scandinaves au Canada 14 (2002-2003): 1-27.
Grendel’s Mother, Icelandic Grýla, and Irish Nechta Scéne: Eviscerating Fear. Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 16 and 17 (1996-97). Ed. John T. Koch. Andover, MA, and Aberystwyth: Celtic Studies Publications, 2003. Pp. 256-68.
If Not Now, When? (Primo Levi). Cyclopedia of Literary Places. 3 vols. Pasadena: Salem, February, 2003. Pp. 518ff.
Karlsefni’s húsasnotra: The Divestment of Vinland. Scandinavian Studies 75 (2003): 341-50.
The Lexicon of Naval Tactics in Ramon Muntaner’s Crònica. The Catalan Review 17 (2003): 177-92. Reprinted in Medieval Ships and Warfare, ed. Susan Rose (Aldershot, Hamps., and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 387-402.
Miss Julie (August Strindberg). Cyclopedia of Literary Places. 3 vols. Pasadena: Salem, February, 2003. Pp. 688f.
The Scend of the Sea: Etymology. The Mariner’s Mirror 89 (2003): 220-22.
Ships and Sailors in Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis. Modern Language Review 98 (2003): 299-310.
Some Problems of Technical Vocabulary in the Tristan Corpus: Archery (Béroul), Seafaring (Thomas). Tristania 22 (2003): 1-21.
In Troubled Etymological Waters: rade in Old French, Anglo-Norman, Middle English, and Beyond. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 105 (2004): 357-62.
Lexical and Literary Evidence for Medieval Trade in Precious Goods: Old French rohal,roal, Middle English rouel ‘walrus (and narwhal?) ivory.’ NOWELE 44 (2004): 101-19.
Marie de France’s Chievrefoil, Hazel Rods, and the Ogam Letters Coll and Uillenn. Arthuriana 14 (2004): 3-16.
Middle English wodewose: A Hybrid Etymology? ANQ 17.3 (2004): 12-20.
Naval Architecture in Marie de France’s Guigemar. Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 54 (2004): 379-91.
Sails in the North: Further Linguistic Considerations. International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 33 (2004): 348-50.
Sea-changes in Thomas’s Roman de Tristan and Dante’s Inferno 5. Romance Quarterly 51 (2004): 67-71.
Swagger and Sashay: An Etymology for Spanish majo/maja. Romance Notes 44 (2004): 293-98.
Wetymologies: Limber, Scupper, Bilge. The Mariner’s Mirror 90 (2004): 390-97.
The Etymology of Late Latin malina ‘spring tide’ and ledo ‘neap tide.’ Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 40 (2005): 35-43.
The Etymology of queer. ANQ 18 (2005): 15-18.
Gat-toothed Alysoun, Gaptoothed Kathleen: Sovereignty and Dentition. Hypermedia Joyce Studies 6 (2005) at http://www.geocities.com/hypermedia_joyce.
Middle English and Scots bulwerk and Continental Reflexes. Notes & Queries 52 (2005): 164-70.
“Or da poggia, or da orza” (Purg. 32): Nautical Deixis in Dante’s Commedia. The RomanicReview 96 (2005): 67-84.
The Origin of fink ‘informer, hired strikebreaker.’ ANQ 18 (2005): 50-54.
Rómid Rígóinmit, Royal Fool: Onomastics and Cultural Valence. Journal of Indo-European Studies 33 (2005): 41-51.
Scones, the OED, and the Celtic Element in English Vocabulary. Notes & Queries 52 (2005): 447-50.
Twelfth-Century Norman and Irish Textual Evidence for Ship-Building and Sea-Faring Techniques of Scandinavian Origin. In Traders, Saints, and Pirates: The Sea in Early Medieval Northwestern Europe. The Heroic Age 8 (2005) at http://www.heroicage.org/issues/8/sayers.html.
Æschere in The Battle of Maldon: Fleet, Warships’ Crews, Spearmen, or Oarsmen. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 107 (2006): 199-205.
Affirmative Diction in Joyce and James Stephens. James JoyceQuarterly 42-43 (2006): 327-32.
Arthur’s Embarkation for Gaul in a Fresh Translation of Wace’s Roman de Brut. Romance Notes 42 (2006): 143-56.
Best the Mythographer, Dinneen the Lexicographer: Muted Nationalism in Scylla and Charybdis (Ulysses). Papers on Joyce [Spain] 12 (2006): 7-24.
Crank and careen. Notes & Queries 53.3 (2006): 306-08.
A Critical Appraisal of Sailing Scenes in New Editions of Le Conte de Floire et Blanchefleur, La Vie de Saint Gilles, Le Roman de Tristan and the Folies Tristan. Nottingham French Studies 45 (2006): 86-103.
Death Abroad in the Skalds’ Sagas: Kormák and the Scottish blótrisi. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 121 (2006): 161-72.
The Etymology of Iroquois: ‘Killer People’ in a Basque-Algonquian Pidgin or an Echo of Norse Irland it mikla ‘Greater Ireland’? Onomastica Canadiana 88 (2006): 43-56.
Exeter Book Riddle 17 and the L-Rune: British *lester ‘vessel, oat-straw hive’? ANQ 19: 2 (2006): 4-9.
Gardens of Horror and Delight: Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and Boccaccio’s Decameron. Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 32 (2006): 30-42.
Illusion and Anticlericalism in a Scene from Le Conte de Floire et Blanchefleur. Neophilologus 90 (2006): 209-14.
Naval Tactics at the Battle of Zierikzee (1304) in the Light of Mediterranean Praxis. Journal of Medieval Military History 4 (2006): 74-90.
Onomastic Paronomasia in Old Norse-Icelandic: Technique, Context, and Parallels. TijdSchrift voor Skandinavistiek 27 (2006): 91-127.
Portraits of the Ulster Hero Conall Cernach: A Case for Waardenburg’s Syndrome? Emania 20 (2006): 75-80.
“Rollant ferit en une perre bise”: Of Stones, Bread, and Birches. Journal of Indo-European Studies 34 (2006): 363-80.
The Use of Quicklime in Medieval Naval Warfare. The Mariner’s Mirror 92 (2006): 262-69.
What’s in a Nonce? Nautical Lexis in Orms þáttr Stórólfssonar. Scandinavian Studies 78 (2006): 11-28.
Celtic Echoes and the Timing of Tristan’s First Arrival in Cornwall. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 108 (2007): 743-50.
Celtic, Germanic and Romance Interaction in the Development of Some English Words in the Popular Register. Notes & Queries 54 (2007): 132-40.
Chaucer’s Description of the Battle of Actium in the Legend of Cleopatra and the Medieval Tradition of Vegetius’s De re militari. The Chaucer Review 42.1 (2007): 76-90.
Ethics or Pragmatics–Fate or Chance–Heathen, Christian, or Godless World? (Hrafnkels saga). Scandinavian Studies 79 (2007): 385-404.
Fourteenth-Century English Balingers: Whence the Name? The Mariner’s Mirror 93 (2007): 4-15.
Grendel’s Mother (Beowulf) and the Celtic Goddess of Territorial Sovereignty. Journal of Indo-European Studies 35 (2007): 31-52.
“Ils appellent le soleil Iesus”: Linguistic Interaction among Montagnais, Basques, and Jesuits in New France. Onomastica Canadiana 89 (2007): 53-63.
La Joie de la Cort (Érec et Énide), Mabon, and Early Irish síd ‘peace; Otherworld.’ Arthuriana 17 (2007): 10-27.
Kay the Seneschal, Tester of Men: The Evolution from Archaic Function to Medieval Character. Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 59 (2007): 375-401.
Virtual Nudes Descending a Staircase: Giacomo Joyce and Strindberg’s Le plaidoyer d’un fou. Hypermedia Joyce Studies 8:1 (2007), web.
Anglo-Norman and Middle English Terminology for Spindle Whorls. ANQ 21:4 (2008): 7-11.
At Fours and Fives: carfax and quincunx. Notes & Queries 55 (2008): 131-34.
Avian Wild Men: Merlin in his Mew and Tristan as Picou. Mediaevalia 29.2 (2008): 53-73.
Contested Etymologies of Some English Words in the Popular Register. Studia Neophilologica 80 (2008): 15-29.
Deficient Royal Rule: The King’s Proxies, Judges, and the Instruments of his Fate. In Essays on the Early Irish King Tales: Rígscéla Éirenn. Ed. Dan M. Wiley, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008. 104-26.
The Etymologies of dog and cur. The Journal of Indo-European Studies. 36 (2008): 401-10.
Le Far de Meschines – The Strait of Messina: Origin and History of the Topographical Term. Journal of Romance Studies 8.2 (2008): 9-20.
Fusion and Fission in the Love and Lexis of Early Ireland. In Words of Love and Love of Words in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Ed. Albrecht Classen. Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. 95-109.
Hoon, coon and boong in Peter Temple’s Detective Fiction. Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 22 (2008): 165-67.
King Alfred’s Timbers. SELIM 15 (2008): 117-24.
Mexican mano and vato: Romani and Caló Origins. JOLLAS: Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies 3:1 (2008): 94-103.
The Origin and Early History of furl. The Nautical Research Journal. 53 (2008): 31-34.
Pest: Interaction in English and Scots. Notes & Queries 55 (2008): 406-08.
The Russian General, Gargantua, and Writing of ‘Wit’s Waste’. Joyce Studies Annual (2008): 149-62.
Skimmour: A Transient Late-Medieval Term for Pirate. The Mariner’s Mirror 94 (2008): 314-19.
A Swedish Traveler’s Reception on an Irish Stage Set: Snorri Sturluson’s Gylfaginning. Keltische Forschungen 3 (2008): 201-20.
“The blond cop” (FW, 186.17): Richard Irvine Best, Ill-Informed Admirer of Wilde. Hypermedia Joyce Studies 9:2 (2008), web.
Walking Home from the Fishpond: Local Allusion in Walter of Bibbesworth’s 13 c. Treatise for English Housewives. Kent Archaeology Society Online Research 2008, web.
The Wyvern. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 109 (2008): 457-65.
Animal Vocalization and Human Polyglossia in Walter of Bibbesworth’s Thirteenth-Century Domestic Treatise in Ango-Norman French and Middle English. Sign System Studies 37: 3‑4 (2009): 173‑87.
Bastard and basket: The Etymologies Reviewed. Leeds Studies in English 39 (2009): 117-25.
Brewing Ale in Walter of Bibbesworth’s 13 c. French Treatise for English Housewives. Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia 14 (2009): 255-67.
Cei, Unferth, and Access to the Throne. English Studies 90:2 (2009):127-41.
An Early Set of Bee-Keeping Words in Anglo-Norman French and Middle English. ANQ 22: 2 (2009): 8-13.
The Etymology and Early History of ceiling. Notes & Queries 56: 4 (2009): 496-99.
The Etymology of strawberry. Moderna språk 103.2 (2009): 15-18.
The Genealogy of the Haggis. Miscelánea 39 (2009): 103-10.
Groin ‘Snout’ and ‘Crease at the Thigh and Abdomen’: Etymologies, Homonymity, and Resolution. SELIM 16 (2009): 151-58.
Learning French in a Late Thirteenth-Century English Bake-House. Petits Propos Culinaires 88 (2009): 35-53.
Mackerel and penguin: International Words of the North Atlantic. NOWELE 56-57 (2009): 41-52.
Names for the Badger in Multilingual Medieval Britain. ANQ 22: 4 (2009): 1-8.
Naming and Renaming the Grampus. Reading Medieval Studies 35 (2009): 79-90.
“Now the French for the properties of a plow”: Agrarian Lexis in French and English in Late 13 c. Britain. AVISTA Forum Journal 19:1‑2 (2009): 21‑27.
Problems with the Etymology of English bird. IESB 14: 1-2 (2009): 42-45.
Chowder: Origin and Early History of the Name. Petits Propos Culinaires 91 (2010): 88-93.
Court-Bouillon: An Early Attestation in Anglo-Norman French? Petits Propos Culinaires 89 (2010): 77-83.
The Early Symbolism of Tarring and Feathering. The Mariner’s Mirror 96:3 (2010): 317-19.
The Etymology of askance. Notes & Queries 57:3 (2010): 334-36.
Flax and Linen in Walter of Bibbesworth’s 13 c. French Treatise for English Housewives. Medieval Clothing and Textiles 6 (2010): 111-26.
Flews ‘the Pendulous Lips of a Hound’. Notes & Queries 57:3 (2010): 337-39.
Germanic gabben, Old French gaber, English gab: Heroic Mockery and Self-Promotion. SELIM 17 (2010): 79-90.
Irish Studies. In Handbook of Medieval Studies: Concepts, Methods, Historical Developments, and Current Trends in Medieval Studies. Ed. Albrecht Classen. Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2010. 727-38.
The Lexis of Wooden House Construction in Bilingual Medieval England. Vernacular Architecture 41 (2010): 52-59.
The Name of the Siege Engine Trebuchet: Origin and History in France and Britain. Journal of Medieval Military History 8 (2010): 189-96.
Out of kelter, helter-skelter. Notes & Queries 57 (2010): 179-82.
Pernickety. Scottish Language 20 (2010): 87-90.
A Popular View of Sexually Transmitted Disease in Late Thirteenth-Century England. Mediaevistik 23 (2010): 186-96.
Some ‘Alsatian’ Etymologies from Eighteenth-Century London. Notes & Queries 57 (2010): 79-83.
Some Disputed Etymologies: kidney, piskie/pixie, tatting, and slang. Notes & Queries 57 (2010): 172-79.
Terminology for a Late Thirteenth-Century British Farm Cart in French and English. AVISTA Forum Journal 20 (2010): 36-43.
Three Anglo-Norman Etymologies: Booze, Gear, and Gin. Notes & Queries 57 (2010): 461-65.
‘To set one’s cap at someone’: Head-Gear or Ship’s Head? Notes & Queries 57:3 (2010): 336-37.
Zierikzee (Naval Battle of). In Medieval Warfare and Military Technology: An Encyclopedia, ed. Clifford Rogers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. III.467-68.
Ahoy! and Jury-rigging: Etymologies. Notes & Queries 58 (2011): 188-91.
The Ancestry of John Doe: A Squib. Eolas 5 (2011): 193-98.
Anchor-painter, bow-painter: Etymology. The Mariner’s Mirror 97.4 (2011): 357-58.
Celtic Kingship Motifs Associated with Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. CSANA Yearbook 10:Proceedings of the Celtic Studies Association of North America. Ed. Morgan Davies (Hamilton, NY: Colgate University Press, 2011). Pp. 116-34.
The Etymologies of Some Terms of Disparagement: culprit, get (and brat), gull, job, niggle,prig, vagrant. Notes & Queries 58 (2011): 31-42.
Lewd: An Etymology. Notes & Queries 58 (November, 2011): 495-96.
More Nautical Etymologies. Notes & Queries 58 (2011): 42-50
Three Paired Etymologies. Notes & Queries 58 (2011): 50-56.
Three Rustic Etymologies: lout, oaf, and dolt. Notes & Queries 58 (November, 2011): 493-95.
Whirligigs, Gigs, and Giggles. Anglophonia 30 (2011): 203-08.
An Archaic Tale-Type Determinant of Chrétien’s Fisher King and Grail. Arthuriana 21:2 (2012): 85-101.
Brose, Atholl brose, spurtle, and thivel. Scottish Language (2014).
Challenges for English Etymology in the Twenty-First Century, with Illustrations. Studia Neophilologica 84 (2012): 1-25.
Dour: Etymology. Notes & Queries (June, 2012).
The Etymology of rivet. Notes & Queries 59 (2012): 488-90.
Extraordinary Beings in Chrétien de Troyes and their Celtic Analogs. Archaeology and Language: Indo-European Studies Presented to James P. Mallory. Karlene Jones-Bley, Martin Huld, and Dean Miller, eds., Journal of Indo-European Studies Monograph No. 60. Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Man (2012). Pp. 24-53.
Netherworld and Otherworld in Early Irish Literature. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 59 (2012): 201-30.
Pigs and Whistles. ANQ 25:2 (2012): 75-77.
Pre-Christian Cosmogonic Lore in Medieval Ireland: The Exile into Royal Poetics. Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 14 (2012): 109-26.
Review article: Joseph Falaky Nagy (ed.), Identifying the ‘Celtic’; Joseph Falaky Nagy (ed), Myth in Celtic literatures; Joseph F. Eska (ed.), Law, literature and society: Christina Chance, Aled Llion Jones, Matthieu Boyd, Edyta Lehmann-Shriver & Sarah Zeiser (eds), Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium 26–27. Peritia – Journal of the Medieval Academy of Ireland 22-23 (2011-2012): 387-401.
Salmagundi. Notes & Queries (June, 2012).
Zola and the Gorgons: Cheese and Gossip in Le Ventre de Paris. Petits Propos Culinaires 96 (2012): 72-79.
The Deflation of the Medieval in Joyce’s Ulysses. The Year’s Work in Medievalism (2013), web.
Descartes and Deaf People. DHI Newsletter 50 (2013): 6-7.
The Early History of Some Traditional Names for Pork Products. Petits Propos Culinaires 98 (2013): 78-88.
Emil Cioran,The Passionate Handbook (Îndreptar patimaş). Opening section. Inventory: The Princeton University Journal of Translation 4 (2013): 50-55.
Extraordinary Weapons, Heroic Ethics, and Royal Justice in Early Irish Literature. Preternature 2.1 (2013).
Fid and Marlinspike: Etymologies. The Mariner’s Mirror (2013).
‘Finn and the man in the tree’ Revisited. eKeltoi 8 (2013), online.
‘Frumente’ [Tracing Pre-Roman Gaul in Medieval French and British Cuisine]. Petits Propos Culinaires 97 (2013): 13-17.
A Glimpse of Medieval Couronian Vernacular Architecture in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Journal of Baltic Studies 44.3(2013): 363-374.
Identity Politics, Lexicography, and the Etymology of tango–una vez más. Romance Notes 53: 2 (2013): 155-164.
Kitty-Corners. ANQ 26.3 (2013): 161-162.
The Maritime and Nautical Vocabulary of Le Voyage de saint Brendan. Neophilologus 97 (2013): 9-19.
Proinsias Mac Cana, The Cult of the Sacred Centre. Review article. Studia Hibernica 39 (2013): 155-170.
A Source for Dr. Johnson’s Self-Referential Entry lexicographer.ANQ 26.1 (2013): 17-19.
Speculations on Sub-Stratum Influence on Early English Vocabulary: pig, colt, frog. Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 21 (2013): 159-72.
Stew, sty, and steward. Notes & Queries 60.3 (2013): 373-76.
Survivals of Gaulish in French: buta ‘hut, dwelling place’. French Studies Bulletin 34 (2013): 1-3.
Three Verbs in a Boat: Conflation in Anglo-Norman Lexis and Lexicography. Neophilologus 97 (2013): 469-473.
Eastern Dishes in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain. Petits Propos Culinaires 101 (2014): 112-117.
Fantastic Technology in Early Irish Literature. Études Celtiques 40 (2014): 85-98.
‘Like harp and harrow’. Notes and Queries 61.4 (2014): 482-483.
More Buns. Petits Propos Culinaires 100 (2014): 126-31.
Parbuckling. The Mariner’s Mirror 100.1 (2014): 75-76.
Qualitative and Quantitative Criteria for Prosperous Royal Rule: Notes on Audacht Morainn and a Vedic Indian Analogue. Studia Celtica 48 (2014): 93-106.
‘The abnilhilisation of the etym’ (Finnegans Wake, 353). Hypermedia Joyce Studies 13 (2014), web.
Whalemen’s Words: Harpoon, Try-works, and Train-oil. The Mariner’s Mirror 100.2 (2014).
Birds and Brains of Forgetfulness: Old Norse óminnis hegri, Irish inchinn dermait. Journal of Indo-European Studies 43.3-4 (2015): 392-422.
Cant, rant, gibberish, and jargon. ANQ 28.1 (2015): 1-10.
Eatymologies: Historical Notes on Culinary Terms. London: Prospect Books, 2015.
Generational Models for the Friendship of Egill and Arinbjǫrn (Egils saga Skallagrímssonar). Scripta Islandica 66 (2015): 143-176.
The Laconic Scar in Early Irish Literature. In ‘His brest tobrosten’: Wounds and Wound Repair in Medieval Culture. Ed. Larissa Tracy and Kelly de Vries. Leiden: Brill (2015), 473-495.
Malting in Early Ireland. Petits Propos Culinaires 102 (2015): 11-13.
Mesocosms and the Organization of Interior Space in Early Ireland. Traditio 70 (2015): 75-110.
Rincne quasi quinque (Sanas Cormaic): Quantification, Simile, and Word-Play. Eolas 8 (2015): 2-11.
The Galician Snack (Imbiß) in Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch. Petits Propos Culinaires 105 (2016): 106-112.
Gower’s ‘So nyh the weder thei wol love’ (Confessio Amantis, 5, 7048). ANQ 28.3-4 (2016): 135-139.
Interpreting Narrative/Textual Difficulties in Bruiden Da Choca: Some Suggestions. Éigse 39 (2016): 160-175.
King Geirröðr (Grímnismál) and the Archaic Motif Cluster of Deficient Rulership, Maritime Setting, and Lower-Body Accidents with Iron Instruments. Nouvelle Mythologie Comparée 3 (2015-2016). Web.
The Names Scyld, Scef, Beow, Beowulf: Shares into Swords. English Studies 97 (2016): 815-820.
Norse Loki as Praxonym. Journal of Literary Onomastics. 5.1 (2016): 17-28. http://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/jlo/vol5/iss1/2.
‘ok er hann einhendr‘: Týr’s Enhanced Functionality. Neophilologus 100.2 (2016): 245-255.
‘Origin unknown’: Pursuing Some Etymological Hold-outs in the Oxford English Dictionary. Studia Neophilologica 88.2 (2016): 205-222.
The Runic Inscription on the Straum Whetstone: Cosmic Order, Proto-Skaldic Poetics, and Efficacy. Journal of Indo-European Studies 44.3-4 (2016): 484-493.
Skírnismál, Byggvir, and John Barleycorn. Arkiv för nordisk filologi 131 (2016): 21-46.
Some English Sailing Terms with Norse Antecedents: weather side, luff, tack, beat to windward. The Mariner’s Mirror 102.3 (2016): 262-274.
Two Scottish Etymologies for English Words [spree and jinx]. Scottish Language 35 (2016): 43-50.
Veiled Menace: Word-Play (ofljóst) in a Stanza by Egill Skallagrímsson. Études Germaniques 71.2 (2016): 295-306.
Verbal Expedients and Transformative Utterances in Egils saga Skallagrímssonar. Scandinavian Studies 88.2 (2016): 159-181.
The Battle of Ventry. Inventory: The Princeton University Journal of Translation 7 (2017).
Bricriu nemthenga (‘poison-tongue’): Onomastics and Social Function in Early Irish Literature. Mediaevistik 30 (2017): 87-102.
English Etymologies from the Popular Register, III. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae 134.1 (2017): 7-14.
A Hiberno-Norse Etymology for English fetch ‘apparition of a living person’. ANQ 30 (2017): 205-209.
How to Eat Crayfish, Stockholm, 1884. Petits Propos Culinaires 107 (2017): 108-116.
An Ill-Tempered Axe for an Ill-Tempered Smith: The Gift of King Eiríkr blóðøx to Skallagrímr Kveldúlfsson in Egil’s saga. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 24 (2017): 16–37.
Irish Affinities of De tonitruis: A Treatise on Prognostication by Thunder. Eolas 10 (2017): 2-15.
Isherwood’s Kuno von Pregnitz (Mr. Norris Changes Trains) and the Premise of Golding’s The Lord of the Flies. ANQ 30 (2017): 255-258.
Lexicography and Historical Urban Popular Speech: slum, bloke, slut, slattern. ANQ 30.1 (2017): 32-37.
“Make that two toddies!” [etymology of toddy]. Petits Propos Culinaires 108 (2017): 82-85.
Medieval Anglo-French and English Names for the Osprey. Tradition Today 6 (2017): 69-73.
No skin in the game: Flaying and Early Irish Law and Epic. In Flaying in the Pre-Modern World: Practice and Representation. Ed. Larissa Tracy. London: Boydell & Brewer, 2017, 261-284.
Of Blind Mice, Bald Mice, and Bawkie-Birds: Euphemism and Early Names for the Bat. ANQ (November, 2017), web.
Scrimshaw and Lexicogenesis. The Mariner’s Mirror 103.2 (2017): 220-223.
Anglo-French, English, and Scots Names for Gulls. Tradition Today 7 (2018): 45-50.
Culinary Terminology in the Lay of Haveloc: Getting It Wrong. Petits Propos Culinaires 112 (2018): 28-32.
Distortions of the Hero: Felix Krull and Cú Chulainn. Oxford German Studies 47:2 (2018): 201-210.
The Etymologies of the English Polysemes clout and cuff. ANQ (April, 2018). Web.
Etymologizing Deprecatory Reduplicative Compounds of the Types flim-flam and higgledy-piggledy.Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae, Part I, 135.2 (2018): 97-106, Part II 135.3 (2018): 147-158.
The Etymology of English boy. ANQ (August, 2018). Web.
The Etymology of English hog. ANQ. (October, 2018). Web.
The Etymology of English toad: Effects of the Old British Substrate? Tradition Today 7 (2018): 68-73. Web.
Food, Drink, and Table Manners in the Bayeux Tapestry. Petits Propos Culinaires 111 (2018): 18-21.
Franz Kafka. ‘Before the Law.’ Inventory: The Princeton University Journal of Translation 8 (2018): 105-107.
Hwæt – The First Word of the Beowulf Poem Revisited. ANQ. January, 2018. Web.
Medieval Norse Naval Architecture in a Poem of Malediction. Journal of Indo-European Studies 46.3-4 (2018): 291-301.
The Origin of Names for the Skimmington Ride: Public Shaming and Communal Entertainment in Rural Britain. ANQ (2018). Web.
Referential Instability in the Historical Designations of Domestic and Game Animals in Britain: The Examples of English teg ‘yearling sheep’and stag ‘male of the red deer’. ANQ (December, 2018). Web.
Curmudgeon, an Etymology. ANQ (July, 2019).
A Dicey Pair of Etymologies: minx ‘saucy girl’ and grifter ‘thief, cheater’. ANQ (April, 2019). Web.
Egill Skallagrímsson, Sonatorrek – The Grievous Loss of Sons. Inventory: A Journal of Translation (Princeton University) 9 (2019): 39-44.
The Etymology of list ‘inclination of a ship’. The Mariner’s Mirror 105 (3) (2019): 356-357.
The Etymology of Old English bædling ‘sodomite’ and the Early History of English bad. ANQ (February, 2019). Web.
Exotic, Erotic: The Etymology of hootchy-kootchy. ANQ (October, 2019). Web.
Fiddle-faddle and flibbertigibbet: Etymologies. ANQ (August, 2019). Web.
The Hidden Lexical Lives of the Fool, Trifle, and Gooseberry. Petits Propos Culinaires 115 (2019): 113-119.
Honky-tonk: Lexicogenesis and Etymology. ANQ (December, 2019).
Middle English hame, Anglo-French estele ‘wooden collar-parts for a draft horse’. Petits Propos Culinaires 113 (2019): 120-123.
The Names of Gawain in Medieval Arthurian Tradition. Neophilologus (2019). Web.
The Names of the Legendary Hero Haveloc the Dane. French Studies Bulletin 40.149 (2019): 1-5.
National Identity and Lexis: Scottish plaid and tartan. Scottish Language 38 (2019): 74-81.
Oddments: A Miscellany of English Etymologies [bounder, brand-new, cad, cahoots, camp, corduroy, duds, flake (as drying rack), gaff, gentle (as maggot), Greenland, hanky-panky, hovel, huckster, lazy-bed, nark, niggle, puke, scam, scathing, scythe, skittish, snath]. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae, Part I ,136.1 (2019, ): 9-23, Part II, 136,2 (2019): 83-97, Part III, 136.3 (2019): 181-198.
Old Norse víking: Etymology, Semantics, Semiotics. Journal of Indo-European Studies 47.3-4 (2019): 507-519.
Puck and the Bogymen: British Reflexes of Indo-European Conceptions of Fear and Flight. Tradition Today 8 (2019): 52-56.
Skulduggery: Etymology. ANQ (May, 2019). Web.
Terms of Disarray: The Etymologies of harum-scarum, pell-mell, and helter-skelter. ANQ (September, 2019). Web.
The Chromatics of the Blues. ANQ. (March, 2020).
Estovers: Customary Communal Rights to Natural Resources in Rural England. ANQ (August, 2020).
The Etymology of bargain and its Background in Early Medieval Trans-Rhenan Trade, ANQ (December, 2020).
The Etymology of English earwig. Tradition Today 9 (2020): 43-46.
The Etymology of jazz – One More Time. ANQ (January, 2020).
Guilt, Grief, Grievance, and the Encrypted Name in Egill Skallagrímsson’s Sonatorrek. Scandinavian Studies 92.2 (2020): 229-246.
More on the Gudgeon. Petits Propos Culinaires 117 (2020): 108-110.
The Origin of epergne ‘branched center piece for the dining table’. Petits Propos Culinaires 116 (2020): 115-118.
Public Cries in the Medieval Languages of Britain havoc! and haro! ANQ (June, 2020).
Range and chain mail: Two Comparable Etymologies, with a Note on mesh, ANQ, October, 2020.
Rhetorical Coercion and Heroic Commitment: Beowulf’s Reception at Heorot. English Studies, September, 2020.
Runic alu and laukaz on Objects of the Germanic Migration Period: Perspectives from the Edda. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 80 (4) (2020): 401-410.
Twelve English Etymologies from the Social Margin (aloof/aluff, boondoggle, cod as ‘dupe’ and codswallop, mollycoddle/mollycot, natty, welch/jew/gyp, and yokel), I, Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 137.2 (2020): 111-122; II, SLUIC 137.3 (2020): 187-197.
Are the Lexicographers Out to Lunch? The Etymologies of lunch, luncheon, and snack. Petits Propos Culinaires 121 (2021): 114-119.
Chaucer and the Color Adjective blew. The Chaucer Review 56.2 (2021): 119-124.
Command Performance: Coercion, Wit, and Censure in Sneglu-Halla þáttr. Mediaevistik 34 (2021): 25-48.
The Dispossessed House-Spirit: The Etymology of goblin and Some Thoughts on Its Early Use. Tradition Today 10 (2021):33-39.
Drag and drag queen: Speculations on Etymology. ANQ. (November, 2021).
The Etymology of dyke and bull-dyke. ANQ (September, 2021).
The Etymology of keelson and Some 14 c. English Evidence for Tacking Gear. The Mariner’s Mirror 107 (2) (2021): 229-231.
The Etymology of mushroom and Some Thoughts on Early Use. Petits Propos Culinaires 117 (2021): 117-119.
The Gift of a Sail in a Tale about King Haraldr harðráði Sigurðarson: Textile and Text. Maal og minne 113.2 (2021): 197-216.
Gleaning: Picking up on the Etymology. Petits Propos Culinaires 117 (2021): 120-124.
Mexican Slang ese “dude, buddy” and its Iberian Caló-Romani Antecedents. Studia Linguistica Universitatis IagellonicaeCracoviensis 138 (2021): 135-143.
Norse Sea-Runes (brimrúnar) in the Viking Age and Beyond. The Mariner’s Mirror 107.4 (October, 2021).
Quiche: The Etymology Behind the Variation in Crusts and Fillings. Petits Propos Culinaires 120 (2021): 114-116.
Sixteenth to Eighteenth-Century Underclass Slang: autem mort ‘married woman’. ANQ (April, 2021).
Sleaze: An Etymology and History. ANQ (February, 2021).
Snoopy’s Pedigree: The Etymology of beagle. ANQ (July, 2021).
The Counterweight Trebuchet, the History of its Name in Medieval France and Britain, and Villard de Honnecourt on the Terminology of its Components. In The World of Villard de Honnecourt: the Portfolio, Medieval Technology, and Gothic Monuments, eds. George Brooks and Maile Hutterer, Leiden: Brill, December, 2022. 89-104.
Dander and dandruff: Etymology. ANQ (December, 2022).
Divine Displacement: Óðinn, Týr, and Their Germanic Antecedents. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 82 (2022): 39-70.
The Etymology and Early Meaning of Old Norse edda. Journal of Indo-European Studies 50.3-4 (2022): 301-306.
The Etymology of faggot and its Historical Tie to Heresy. ANQ (January, 2022).
The Guta Lag‘s Injunctions Against Pagan Worship: The Term Stafgarþar From the Perspectives of Taxonomy, Legalese, and Poetic Diction. Namn och bygd 110 (2022): 77-86.
‘It gives me the willies‘. ANQ (July, 2022).
The Mythological Norse Ravens Huginn and Muninn: Interrogators of the Newly Slain. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensia 139.2 (2022): 143-155.
The Origin of the Name Beowulf in a Gutnish (Old Gotlandic) *Baþolfr ‘Battle-Wolf’. ANQ, March, 2022.
Ringing Changes on Old Norse-Icelandic mál in Kormáks saga. Gripla 33 (2022): 69-114.
Runes on the Horn, Leeks in the Ale: Literacy and its Consequences in Early Germanic Drinking Conventions. Petits Propos Culinaires 124 (2022): 110-118.
Savory and Unsavory Origins for the Terms clabber and clafoutis. Petits Propos Culinaires 124 (2022): 97-100.
Shipping and Navigation. The Chaucer Encyclopedia, ed. R. Newhauser, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2022.
Cosmic Egg and Infant Demiurge: Antecedents of Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden (Blood Meridian). ANQ (April, 2023).
Dogwood, Whippletree, and Swingletree: Cross-Referential Etymologies. ANQ (April, 2023).
The Endowing of Askr and Embla, and its Reverberations in the Poetry of Egill Skallagrímsson. Scandinavian Studies 95.3 (2023): 345-366.
The Etymology and Early History of skiff: Internationanl Waters. The Mariner’s Mirror 109.4 (2023): 473-475.
Existential Verse-Capping between a Female Troll and the Poet Bragi. Mediaevistik 36 (2023): 51-70.
The Fox as Dying Hero: A New Edition and Translation of Skaufhala bálkr, with Haukur Þorgeirsson. Scandinavian-Canadian Studies. November, 2023. Online.
Irish Diet in the Eleventh Century as Reflected in the Satire of Aislinge Meic Con Glinne.Irish Food History: A Companion, edited by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman. Dublin: Technological University Dublin 2023.
Óðinn’s Avatar: McCarthy’s Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 21.2 (2023):187-191.
The Old Norse Poetic Meter Kviðuháttr as a Medium for History’s Verdict. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 83.2 (2023), 146-164.
Onomastics and Destiny: Óláfr Höskuldsson and Family (Laxdæla saga). Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensia 140 (2023): 287-308.
Playing the Dozens: Etymology Reconsidered. ANQ (December, 2023).
Rigging Norse Ships in Vinland, ca. 1000 AD: The Halyard Block. The Northern Mariner 23.3-4 (2023): 369-382.
Shetland: An Ecological Etymology. The New Shetlander 300 (May, 2023): 41-42.
Twee ‘dainty, quaint, precious, mawkish.’ ANQ (July, 2023).
‘Wae, hey, blow the man down’. Argonauta 11.1 (2023): 19-22.
Aislinge Meic Con Glinne at the Origin of the Motif of the Land of Cockaigne. Posted on Researchgate, September, 2024.
Bede’s Caedmon: A Bilingual Scop from the Court of Oswiu? Studia Linguistica Cracoviensis 141.4 (2024): 279-290.
A Couplet on King Penda of Mercia in the Old Welsh Englynion y Beddau (Stanzas of the Graves). Old English Newsletter 47.2 (July, 2024).
The Dark Millennium of souse. Petits Propos Culinaires 128 (2024): 12-16.
From Agnostic Heathen to Christian Convert: Trust in One’s Own Might and Main in the Viking Age. Neophilologus 108.1 (2024): 163-179.
Hijack: Etymology and History. ANQ (August, 2024).
Of Peerie Bairns and Periwinkles. ANQ (April, 2024).
Óláfr pái Hǫskuldsson’s Landing in Ireland (Laxdæla saga) in Light of the Irish Law of the Shore. NOWELE 77.1 (2024): 1-13.
The Old Norse Toponym Grænland and its Tie to the Trade in Walrus Ivory. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 84 (2024) 567–584.
Some British ‘Black Dog’ Names: Barghest, Gytrash, Moddey Dhoo, Skriker, Shuck. Tradition Today 12 (2024): 19-24.
Spunk, gormless, and Their Multi-Factor Etymologies. ANQ. November, 2024,
Emil Cioran, Amurgul gîndurilor (The Twlight of Thoughts), Part I, English translation and commentary. Delos: A Journal of Translation and World Literature. Forthcoming.
The Norse Ship of the Dead, Lexical Substitution, and the Pragmatics of Norse Ship Burials. New Norse Studies 2. Forthcoming.
The Prull Entry in Sanas Cormaic: Verse-Capping as a Vehicle for Censure. Éigse 42 (2024): 250-258. Forthcoming.
Reading Egill Skallagrímsson’s Hǫfuðlausn (Head-Ransom) as Parody. Mediaevistik. Forthcoming.
The Source of the Madman’s Apocalyptic Imagery on the Death of God in Nietzsche’s Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Oxford Grman Studies. Forthcoming.
”What do women want?’ Chaucer’s Concept of Female Sovereignty in Atwood’s The Edible Woman. The Margaret Atwood Studies Journal. Forthcoming.
The Afterlife of Legendary Irish Kings and Sovereignty Figures in Medieval Icelandic Literature. Celtic Mythology, ed. Patrice Lajoie and Guillaume Oudaer. Under review.
The Etymology of Shetlandic hap ‘shawl, coverlet’ and its Tie to the Old Norse Gods. Under review.
The Grieving Land: Echrys Ynys from The Book of Taliesin. Under review.
Grit: True and Otherwise. Under review.
Mythological Allusion in Egill Skallagrímsson’s Late Verse. Under review.
The Old Norse-Icelandic Literary Trope ofljóst. Under review.
Old Norse Nautical Terminology in Snorri Sturluson and its Relevance for Marine Archaeology and Replica Building. Under review.
Old Norse-Icelandic veðrviti: Weathervane or Status Marker, Standard? Under review.
Pícaro and germanía: Sources in Caló (Andalusian Para-Romani). Under review.
Six Scots Etymologies: glamour, glower, ‘not see a stime‘, gawsy, slawsy, and the Modal Verb boost ‘must’. Under review.
A Ship (and Poem?) in a Storm in a Stanza by Egill Skallgrímsson. Under review.
Student Reminiscenes as Glosses in Two Late Twelfth-Century Icelandic Manuscripts. Under review.
The Weaponry of Norse Mercenaries at the Battle of Brunanburh as Depicted in the Saga of Egill Skallagrímsson. Under review.
