*dwergaz

Uncertain. Traditionally isolated within Proto-Germanic. (Kroonen 2013) derives the noun from a strong verb **dwerganą (‘to squeeze, press’), reflected by Middle High German zwergen (‘to squeeze, pinch’) but external cognates are lacking and the semantics are somewhat doubtful. A newer proposal by (Ginevra 2020) derives *dwergaz from an earlier **þwergaz < Proto-Indo-European *twerḱ-ó- (‘one who cuts/fashions’), from root *twerḱ- (‘to cut, fashion’), comparing Vedic Sanksrit त्व॑ष्टर् (Tváṣṭar-, ‘divine craftsman’) and Avestan 𐬚𐬡𐬋𐬭𐬆𐬱𐬙𐬀𐬭 (ϑβōrəštar) (ϑβōrəštar, ‘fashioner, maker, creator’) and interpreting the Proto-Germanic dwarfs originally as ‘fashioners/craftsmen’. The expected initial *þw- vs. universally attested *dw- remains the main difficulty in this interpretation.

An alternative derivation, originally proposed by (he proposed a possible **dwezgo- origin in his earliest dictionary editions but soon rejected them, see Kluge 1884) and revived by (Liberman 2016), attempts to trace the lemma back to a pre-Germanic voiceless cluster **dʰwes-k-(extended from PIE *dʰewh₂- 'smoke; mist, haze'), which would morphologically link “dwarf” to the same root as *dusēn (to swoon, faint; to be dizzy; to slumber'). Under this framework, an oxytone preform, **dwesk-ó-s, is hypothesized to have undergone exceptional cluster-voicing to produce an early Proto-Germanic variant **dwezgaz, which would then regularly yield Northwest Proto-Germanic *dwergaz via rhotacism. However, this hypothesis is widely rejected by contemporary Indo-Europeanists because voiceless sibilant-stop clusters (*sp, *st, *sk) are phonotactically immune to Verner’s Law and uniformly persist as unvoiced *sk into Proto-Germanic (cf. PIE *pisk-ó-s (‘fish’) yields Proto-Germanic *fiskaz). Thus, this theory must be rejected on that basis.