We Deal with a Dim, Dreary, Drizzly Day

Once upon a midnight dreary….

We’ve had some dim, dreary, drizzly days recently in southern California. That’s not unusual in January; this is our rainy season.

While rain was dripping off the eaves, dropping on the ground, adding to the dankness and dimness, it occurred to me that all those “D” words that came to mind have been in our language a long time: They all had predecessors in Old English. Spelling and pronunciation have changed, but English used them a thousand years ago.

Dreary

I investigated, to make certain my impression was correct. I started with an excellent-sounding word, “dreary,” because I knew for certain it was present in Old English, spelled drēorig. To speak it, summon up a slightly guttural “gh” at the end: DRAY-ouh-reegh!” Dreary!

I’d forgotten that a thousand years ago the word could also mean “gory” or “bloody,” as well as sad. It shows up in a number of old poems, including Beowulf, in that sense of “bloody.”

In one scene, Beowulf leads the warriors to the edge of Grendel’s mere, where any number of their comrades have been dragged to doom by the monster.

wyn-lēasne wudu   wæter under stōd / drēorig on gedrēfed.

The woeful wood, water beneath it /  bloodstained and swirling*

A Word in Indo-European Language

Drēorig came to English via ancient Germanic. Before that, the original root word was all the way back in Indo-European during the Neolithic era: dhreu. Dhreu carried several meanings, including flow, drip and drop.

More New/Old Words

What I discovered was that a number of those other dreary, drizzly D-words ALSO spun off from dhreu as thousands of years passed and humans extended their vocabularies in innumerable languages.

Take “drop” and “dropping,” like that rain falling outside. There were several Old English “drop” words, including just plain drop, dropa and dreopan. Then the trail leads back through Germanic, Old Teutonic and that selfsame dhreu root word.

It’s always risky to make assumptions about whether words that look or sound similar are actually related, but in this case, “drip,” has a similar heritage. We had drippan in Middle English, but NOT in Old English. Instead, we got it from all those Norse and Danish invaders in the north of England (the Danelaw and all that). Once again, it stemmed from German and back to prehistoric dhreu.

Our word “droop” also followed almost exactly the same route to be in our vocabulary today.

“Dribble?” Spun directly off “drip” in a process known as alteration. Think of it as a form of onomatopoeia, and that’s close enough for us amateurs.

Some Dead Ends

Ah, we’re having fun now, but it gets better! I encountered two interesting etymological dead ends.

First: “dim.” An excellent word for a dark, rainy day, as well as for people who don’t agree with you. It was around in Middle- and Old English, but not very well attested. Working backwards, it’s there in Old Frisian, Old Norse, Old High German and possibly Old Teutonic, but the trail ends there: There’s no sign of it in Indo-European. Maybe another onomatopoetic sound one of our ancestors simply invented, and it stuck around.

Finally, “drizzle.” It DID derive from dhreu, carried through various changes in German into Old English as the barely recognizable drysnian. SOUNDS like drizzle when you say it: DRIZ-nee-ahn. But the path stops at that point, and “drizzle” doesn’t show up again in English until the 15th century, several hundred years later.

The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the word dropped out of use, only to be re-adopted into English from either Norse or Danish, which both had versions of the word.

Back to Dreary with Another Poet

I’ve written before about my high school English teacher, Mrs. Drake, with great admiration. Every kid should have at least one teacher who inspired them. Mrs. Drake was one of mine. She knew something about the power of the spoken language, and often read aloud to us. A bit over the top, perhaps, but, yes, she was darned good.

One of her favorites was “The Raven,” by Edgar Allen Poe, which always resonates with teen-agers. It’s a vivid memory: Mrs. Drake standing in front of the class, enunciating ….

ONCE, upon a MIDnight DREARRRRRY …. While I PONdered… WEAK and WEARRRRY….”

Poe recognized “dreary” as an effective and evocative word, as did a nameless poet a thousand years before him. Language changes, but is always powerful.

And, if you’re pondering a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore on some dank, dreary day and you drowse a bit — that word also began with dhreu.

Comments?

What about any readers who also know Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, German, Swedish or other Germanic languages? Any words you recognize here that are still similar in your languages? Please leave a comment.

© Brad Nixon 2019. One photograph © M. Vincent 2019, used by kind permission.

*My translation of Beowulf lines 1416-17, with assistance from Seamus Heaney, Beowulf, A New Verse Translation, W. W. Norton, New York, 2000. Sources included The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, New York, 1979; The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 2000; A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Clark-Hall, Wilder Publications, 2011; Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd Ed., Frederick Klaeber, D. C. Heath, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1950.

P.S. I found an error in the OED. It cites the wrong line number for the passage from Beowulf under “dreary.“