EESTI NORG-TÜVE ETÜMOLOOGIAST
Etymology of the Estonian stem norg

Summary/Abstract: The Estonian stem norg occurs e.g. in the adverb norgus ~ norus ‘drooping, hang¬ing; depressed, dejected’ and in the verb norutama ‘to be depressed, dejected’. No sufficient etymology of the stem has been presented so far. Julius Mägiste has suggested Finnish norkko, norko ‘hanging position’, norkkua, norkoa ‘hang around’, and norkottaa ‘stand and wait’, found in Elias Lönnrot’s Finnish-Swedish dictionary, as its possible equivalents. Considering the Finnish dialect data, in general this position can be accepted. More exactly, Finnish norkollaan ‘droop¬ing, hanging; depressed, dejected’, norkoilla ‘to crave; to lie in wait, to skulk; to wait, to look on passively’, dial. also ‘to be depressed, sickly or hesitant’ and norkoa ‘to strive for; to desire, to crave; to beg’ can be brought forward as the etymological equivalents of the stem. The earlier meaning of the stem may have been ‘(to be) drooping, hanging’. The semantics of the stem have developed in different directions: in Estonian the stem has acquired the meaning ‘(to be) de¬pressed, dejected’ (there are some examples of this meaning in Finnish as well), while in Finnish the new meanings are ‘to wait, to look on passively’ > ‘to desire, to crave; to beg’. At the same time, it is probable that the stem norg is originally identical to the stem of the word nõrguma ‘to drip, to trickle, to ooze’.

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