Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/angustiz

MLG > ON
Hey, can you verify that the ON term is a Low German borrowing? My Danish dictionaries (Politikens Nudansk Ordbog, DDO, ODS) say the Danish word is borrowed from MLG (or just "Low German", which I presume includes MLG) without mentioning any ON word.__Gamren (talk) 19:57, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
 * is in Gerhard Koebler's dictionary of Old Norse. I don't know where it is actually attested. —Rua (mew) 15:08, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
 * University of Copenhagen has a dictionary that you might be interested in, then. Many of the works seem a bit late for Old Norse, but I assume you know how to differentiate between Old Norse and Icelandic.__Gamren (talk) 09:26, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I think that based purely on the nature of the borrowing, we can assume that if the word existed in Icelandic, it was brought there from Scandinavia. The Swedes and Danes were in contact with Low German speakers after all, while Icelanders weren't. —Rua (mew) 11:58, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

Etymology, and the suffix *-ustō
The i-stem inflection of this word is secondary to West Germanic, like *jugundi (*jugunþ- after *dugunþ-) from earlier Proto-Germanic *juwundō (> Gothic jūnda), and *dugunþi from earlier *dugunþō. The stem *angus- can't be from *angus/*angwaz, because that stem is purely *angu-, and that's just not how early post-Indo-European derivation worked. Rather the stem comes from a lost perfect verb, whose participle *angwōz/*angus-, "having been troubled, having feared" provided the stem. This verb was replaced by *angāną, "to be afraid" (also a factitive, "to become narrow, to narrow") > OHG angēn.

This same derivation process provided a new suffix, Germanic *-ustō, with a sense of "state of being, having been ...", as in *þewanōną, "to be a servant", > *þewanustō, "state of being a servant: service". West Germanic *þewanōstō remodeled the first vowel after the thematic verbal stem, and became masculine in the continental languages, while Old Norse changed the suffix to -usta (< *-ustǭ) and then similarly to -asta (*-ōstǭ). Burgundaz (talk) 04:59, 19 January 2021 (UTC)