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Template:Short description The suffix in Modern English survives only in and . It descends from Old English , which was more productive, carrying a meaning of "action or proceeding, state of being, practice, ritual". As a noun, Old English means "play, sport", deriving from an earlier meaning of "sacrificial ritual or hymn" (Proto-Germanic ). A putative term for a "hymn to the gods" () in early Germanic paganism is attested only as a personal name, Oslac.

Suffix

The Old English nouns in include "nuptials" (from which the now obsolete ), , and "warfare", and "sexual intercourse", "robbery", "punishment", "calumny" besides the "pledge-giving", also "nuptials" (from which ). A few compounds appear only in Middle English, thus "occult practice, magic", ferlac "terror", shendlac "disgrace", "faithfulness", "wooing", all of them extinct by the onset of Early Modern English. The earliest words taking the suffix were probably related to warfare, comparable to the (-play) suffix found in "swordplay".

The Old Norse counterpart is , loaned into North Midlands Middle English as , in the Ormulum appearing as . The suffix came to be used synonymously with , forming abstract nouns, e.g. clænleȝȝe "cleanness".

Noun

The etymology of the suffix is the same as that of the noun "play, sport", but also "sacrifice, offering", corresponding to obsolete Modern English (dialectal ) "sport, fun, glee, game", cognate to Gothic "dance", Old Norse "game, sport" (origin of English "play, joke, folly") and Old High German "play, song, melody." Ultimately, the word descends from Proto-Germanic . Old English ("to please", Modern English ) is from the same root. In modern English, the noun has been reintroduced through the cognate Swedish as a specialist term referring to mating behavior.

Thus, the suffix originates as a second member in nominal compounds, and referred to "actions or proceedings, practice, ritual" identical with the noun "play, sport, performance" (obsolete Modern English "fun, sport, glee", obsolete or dialectal Modern German ).

Only found in Old English is the meaning of '(religious) offering, sacrifice, human sacrifice,' in Beowulf 1583f. of the Danes killed by Grendel, in Lambeth Homilies (c. Template:Trim) of the sacrifice of Christ. In the Anglo-Saxon Gospel (c. Template:Trim) in Matthew 8:4 for , denoting an offering according to Mosaic law. In the 13th century it appears to lose its religious connotations and denotes gifts more generally, of the offerings of the Three Magi (Ancrene Riwle 152, c. Template:Trim), and in Genesis and Exodus (c. Template:Trim, 1798) of the gifts sent by Jacob to Esau. From the 14th century, under the influence of "to move quickly, to leap, to fight", the noun comes to mean "fun, sport" exclusively. In this meaning, it survives into the 19th century in North English dialect in the compound "female playmate."

The word is also a compound member in given names, in Sigelac, Hygelac and Oslac.

Oslac has Scandinavian and continental cognates, Asleikr and Ansleih. Based on this, Koegel (1894) assumes that the term may go back to Common Germanic times, denoting a , a hymn, dance or play for the gods in early Germanic paganism. Grimm (s.v. ) compares the meaning of Greek , denoting first the ceremonial procession to the sacrifice, but also ritual dance and hymns pertaining to religious ritual.

Hermann (1928) identifies as such the hymns sung by the Germans to their god of war mentioned by Tacitus and the victory songs of the Batavi mercenaries serving under Gaius Julius Civilis after the victory over Quintus Petillius Cerialis in the Batavian rebellion of 69 AD, and also the "abominable song" to Wodan sung by the Lombards at their victory celebration in 579. The sacrificial animal was a goat, around whose head the Lombards danced in a circle while singing their victory hymn. As their Christian prisoners refused to "adore the goat", they were all killed (Hermann presumes) as an offering to Wodan.

References

• Oxford English Dictionary
• Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch
• Rudolf Koegel, Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur bis zum Ausgange des Mittelalters (1894), p. 8.
• Paul Hermann, Altdeutsche Kultgebräuche, Jena (1928), p. 10.[1]