*bainą

Runic: ᛒᚨᛁᚾᚨ Pronunciation: /ˈbɑi̯.nɑ̃/

noun · neuter · a-stem

Meanings

bone
leg

Etymology

Of uncertain origin. Securely Proto-Northwest Proto-Germanic as a noun meaning ‘bone’, later also ‘leg’ in some descendants. (Urban 2015) makes a persuasive argument using cross-linguistic typological data to determine the dominant directionality of semantic change (bone > leg vs. leg > bone). He found that across the world's languages, there is a strong, recurrent metonymic pathway where words for ‘bone’ naturally shift to mean ‘leg’ or ‘limb’ (often via intermediate senses like ‘shinbone’ or ‘thighbone’). Conversely, languages very rarely take a broad word for ‘leg’ and narrow it down to mean ‘bone’.

An interesting, though speculative, recent analysis by (Pentangelo 2021) posits the source as a blend of the b- ‘body-related’ phonestheme common in Proto-Germanic (e.g., English back, bare, beard, belly, bile, bite, bladder, blister, blood, brow, brain, breast, butt, etc. with *stainaz ‘stone’ meaning ‘body stone’. However, this is problematic morphologically, as *stainaz is a masculine a-stem, whereas the *bain- variant securely meaning ‘bone’ is a neuter a-stem, which would seem to negate the possibility of being the word used for the proposed blend.

Proposed Indo-European derivations from *bʰeyh₂- ‘strike’, *bʰeh₂-(‘to shine’), or from a formation related to ON beinn ‘straight’ are semantically difficult and remain unproven.

Declension

Case	Singular	Plural
Nom.	bainą	bainō
Acc.	bainą	bainō
Gen.	bainas, bainis	bainǫ̂
Dat.	bainai	bainamaz
Inst.	bainō	bainamiz
Voc.	bainą	bainō

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Descendants

*bain (Proto-West Germanic)
- bēn (Old Dutch)
  - bêen (Middle Dutch)
    - bein (Limburgish)
*bain (Proto-West Germanic)
- bēn (Old Dutch)
  - bêen (Middle Dutch)
    - been (Dutch)
      - been (Afrikaans)
*bain (Proto-West Germanic)
- bān (Old English)
  - bon, ban, bane, bone, boon (Middle English)
    - bone (English)
    - byen (Geordie)
    - bane, bain, bean, been (Scots)
*bain (Proto-West Germanic)
- bēn (Old Frisian)
  - Been (Saterland Frisian)
  - bien (West Frisian)
*bain (Proto-West Germanic)
- bein (Old High German)
  - bein (Middle High German)
    - Boan (Bavarian)
    - Bein (German)
    - ביין (beyn) (Yiddish)
*bain (Proto-West Germanic)
- bein (Old High German)
  - bein (Middle High German)
    - Been (Central Franconian)
      - Been (Luxembourgish)
*bain (Proto-West Germanic)
- bēn (Old Saxon)
  - bên (Middle Low German)
    - Been, Bein (Low German)
    - Been (Plautdietsch)
bein (Old Norse)
- bein (Faroese)
- bein (Icelandic)
bein (Old Norse)
- bein (Norwegian Nynorsk)
  - bein (Norwegian Bokmål)
bein (Old Norse)
- ben (Old Danish)
  - ben (Danish)
    - ben (Norwegian Bokmål)
bein (Old Norse)
- bēn (Old Swedish)
  - ben (Swedish)

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