*-ārijaz

Runic: ᚨᚱᛁᛃᚨᛉ Pronunciation: /ɑː.ri.jɑz/

suffix · forms nouns · masculine · ja-stem

Function

  1. forms agent nouns and occupational nouns: ‘one associated with X’, ‘one who works with X’, ‘one who does X’
  2. ancestor of productive English -er in agent nouns

Etymology

The accepted theory regarding the etymology of *-ārijaz maintains that it entered into Proto-Germanic as a borrowing from Latin -ārius via Proto-Italic *-āzios-, from Proto-Indo-European *-eh₂so-, which was further extended with the suffix *-(i)yó-s. This idea has remained popular because the formal and functional uses of the suffix are similar in both language families. The suffix was originally used to create occupational terms from verbs in Proto-Germanic. However, it eventually became productive in creating agentive terms in the language.

Alternatively, Gąsiorowski (2017) derives *-ārijaz internally, relating it to the feminine occupational suffix *–astrijōn- (Modern English –ster; as in “spinster”). He believes it originated as an earlier alternation of a pre-Germanic collective complex *–sr–ih₂–ó– that was formed from the PIE feminine agentive base *‑sōr. This would make the masculine suffix originally native, though probably reinforced by Latin -ārius. The proposal is attractive, but it has not been generally accepted; the main difficulties are the uncertain evidence for the required *-sr- > *-zr- > -r- development and the indirect morphological and semantic pathways (building a masculine agent suffix from a feminine one seems unlikely at best).

Paradigm

CaseSingularPlural
Nom.-ārijaz-ārijōz, -ārijōs
Acc.-āriją-ārijanz
Gen.-ārijas, -ārīs-ārijǫ̂
Dat.-ārijai-ārijamaz
Inst.-ārijō-ārijamiz
Voc.-ārī-ārijōz, -ārijōs

Find a form

Descendants

  • *-ārī (Proto-West Germanic)
    • *-āri, -ere (Old Dutch)
      • -ere (Middle Dutch)
        • -er (Limburgish)
  • *-ārī (Proto-West Germanic)
    • *-āri, -ere (Old Dutch)
      • -ere (Middle Dutch)
        • -er, -aar (Dutch)
          • -er (Afrikaans)
  • *-ārī (Proto-West Germanic)
    • -ere, -re (Old English)
      • -ere, -ar, -are, -er (Middle English)
        • -er (English)
  • *-ārī (Proto-West Germanic)
    • -ere, -re (Old English)
      • -ere, -ar, -are, -er (Middle English)
        • -ar, -ir (Middle Scots)
          • -er (Scots)
  • *-ārī (Proto-West Germanic)
    • -ere (Old Frisian)
      • -er (Saterland Frisian)
      • -er (West Frisian)
  • *-ārī (Proto-West Germanic)
    • -āri, -ari, -eri (Old High German)
      • -ære, -er (Middle High German)
        • -er (Alemannic German)
        • -er (Bavarian)
        • -er (German)
        • -er (Luxembourgish)
        • ־ער (-er) (Yiddish)
  • *-ārī (Proto-West Germanic)
    • -āri (Old Saxon)
      • -ære, -ēre, -ere (Middle Low German)
        • -er (Low German)
  • *-ᚨᛊ (*-as) (Proto-Norse)
    • -s (Old Norse)
      • -s (Faroese)
      • -s (Icelandic)
      • -s (Norwegian)
  • *-ᚨᛊ (*-as) (Proto-Norse)
    • -s (Old Norse)
      • -s (Old Danish)
        • -s (Danish)
  • *-ᚨᛊ (*-as) (Proto-Norse)
    • -s (Old Norse)
      • -s, -x (Old Swedish)
        • -s, -x (Swedish)
  • -ari (Old Norse)
    • -ari (Faroese)
    • -ari (Icelandic)
    • -ar, -ari, -are, -ær (Norwegian Nynorsk)
  • -ari (Old Norse)
    • -eræ (Old Danish)
      • -er (Danish)
      • -er (Norwegian Bokmål)
  • -ari (Old Norse)
    • -are, -ari (Old Swedish)
      • -are (Swedish)
  • -𐌹𐍃 (-is), -𐌰𐍂𐌴𐌹𐍃 (-āreis) (Gothic)
    • *-ařь (Proto-Slavic)

Explore/search these descendants

View on Wiktionary