TH TH

THE 20 BIENNIAL DICTIONARY SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA MEETING (DSNA-20) AND THE 9 STUDIES IN
THE HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONFERENCE (SHEL-9)
AURELIJUS VIJŪNAS, English Dept., National Kaohsiung Normal University (Taiwan); vijunas@nknu.edu.tw

The Length of y in the Old English Adjective dryge ‘dry’

1. It is commonly assumed that the English adjective dry reflects Old English drȳge, with a long vowel ȳ in its root
(Holthausen 1917, Sievers/Brunner 1942, Partridge 1958, Campbell 1959, Klein 1966, Onions 1966, Weekley
1967, Holthausen 1974, Ayto 1990, OED, Heidermanns 1993, Terasawa 1997, Barnhart 2008, Kroonen 2013).

2. OE dryge appears with a short vowel in Skeat (1888), Vercouille (1898), Kemble (1843).

3. BT (1898 edition): a short vowel is assumed in OE dryge/drige ‘dry’ (also spelled drygge/drigge) and the related
words (drugað ‘drought’, drugian/druwian ‘to become dry’, drygan ‘to dry’, and drygness/drigness, drugung ‘dry-
ness’). A long vowel is assumed in the g-less variant drīe.

4. BTS: all the short vowels of BT have been changed to the corresponding long vowels. Same in Bosworth (1901),
CASD and MED.

5. SO, WAS THE VOWEL LONG OR SHORT?

6. No explanations are provided by those who use the short vowel.

7. Some explanations for the long vowel do exist:

7.1. F. HEIDERMANNS adduced Middle Dutch form drūge ‘dry’, which he believed to represent an underlying
/drǖge/, with an umlauted historical ū. Accordingly, Heidermanns thought the two attested forms pointed to
a Proto-Germanic i-stem *drūgi- (cf. Heidermanns 1993:162).

7.2. A. CAMPBELL suggested that, based on the alternation of ī and ig in Old English manuscripts, same alter-
nation could be assumed for ȳ and yg (Campbell 1959:114f.): thus, just like <anwigge> is written for a histo-
rical ānwīge ‘combat, duel’ (dat. sg. of ān-wīg), or <astiggende> for āstīgende ‘descending’ (from ā-stīgan
‘descend, ascend’), <drygge> or <adryggean> should represent an underlying /-drȳg-/.

8. What about the etymology? Little to be found in English etymological dictionaries:

8.1. PARTRIDGE (1958): OE dryge (spelled drȳge) is compared with Middle Dutch droge/druge, and no further
analysis is provided.

8.2. AYTO (1990): drȳge is said to reflect PGmc. *draugiz and the base *draug-/*drūg-. Comparison with Du. droog
‘dry’, Old Icelandic drjúgr ‘lasting, strong’, Old Prussian drūktai ‘firmly’, dialectal Lithuanian drūktas ‘thick,
strong’ – “the theory being that strength and endurance are linked with drying out” (Ayto 1990:186).

8.3. ONIONS (1966): drȳge < PGmc. *drūgiz; comparison with Middle Dutch drōghe ‘dry’. All are based on “Gmc.
*draug-, *dreug-, *drg-”.

9. More information regarding the etymology of OE dryge may be extracted from Dutch etymological dictionaries,
in which the development of the Dutch adjective droog ‘dry’ is discussed.

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9.1. N. VAN WIJK (1912): Du. droog and OE drȳge connected to Lith. drùngnas and Old Irish droch, without any
further discussion of the semantics.

9.2. J. DE VRIES (1970): MoD. droog ‘dry’ together with OE dryge (spelled drŷge) are said to be related to Old High
German trockan, Frankish driech ‘persevering’, northern Frisian dreegh ‘fixed, hard’, as well as Old Icelandic
drjúgr ‘tenacious’, and relating all these formations to ancient construction technology, viz. the drying of clay
coating on woven walls.

9.3. J. DE VRIES (1971): no more ancient building technologies, but rejected a proposal by J. Pokorny (IEW), who
sought a connection between Du. droog and OE drȳge on the one hand and certain Balto-Slavic formations on
the other hand, viz. Lith. drugỹs ‘fever; butterfly’, Polish drżeć, Russian дрожáть drožát’ ‘tremble, shiver’ etc.
De Vries’ conclusion: the Germanic words came from some “substratum language” (de Vries 1971:139).

9.4. J. DE VRIES & F. DE TOLLENAERE (2000): MoDu. droog, along with OIc. draugr ‘tree’ and Middle Dutch
drōghe ‘dry’, is derived from PGmc. *draugia-, and OE drȳge, along with Middle Dutch drūge and Frisian drūgje,
from PGmc. *drūgia- (de Vries & de Tollenaere 2000:119).

9.5. P. A. F. VAN VEEN (1997:219) combined all the Germanic forms mentioned above into one group, without an
attempt to explain their phonological history or etymology.

9.6. N. VAN DER SIJS et al. (2009): OE dryge (spelled thus) and MDu. drughe/drueghe ‘dry’ are reconstructed as
PGmc. *drūgi-, while the MDu. druge/droge ‘id.’ are said to reflect an earlier *draugi-.

10. IEW: in short, OE drȳge is said to derive from the root *dhreugh- ‘shake, shiver’ (vt, cf. G. ‘zittern, [sich] schüt-
teln’). Relationship to Baltic, Slavic, and Greek data assumed, cf. Polish drżeć, Russian drožát’ ‘shiver’, Lith.
drugỹs ‘fever; butterfly’ [< *‘shivering’]), Greek (Hesych.) toiqorÚssein: se…ein (< ? *-dhorugh-e-); toiqorÚktria:
¹ toÝj seismoÝj poioàsa (< ? *-dhorugh-tr-); tanqarÚzw, tanqalÚzw ‘id.’ (< ? *-dhar/lug-e-). These forms may
be corrupt, as is frequently the case with Hesychian data, and they may represent an actual *-qrÚssein (<
*dhrugh-é-), which would be both more agreeable from the Indo-European point of view, and, if correct, one
could connect these Greek forms with the Slavic verbal formations.

11. G. KROONEN (2013): there existed several different stems in Proto-Germanic, viz. *đraugja-, *đrūǥja-, and
*đrukknu-, and OE drȳge reflects *đrūǥja-. Etymology of all these formations was considered “unknown”, but
Kroonen suggested that they might be related to Skt. druhila- ‘rough’.

12. EVALUATION:

12.1. Connection between OE dryge etc. and Lith. drungnas ‘tepid’ (< PIE *dhreh2gh- ‘become agitated’, LIV.154f.)
may be safely abandoned.

12.2. The connection of OE dryge/drȳge to OIc. drjúgr etc. and ancient building technologies (later abandoned by
de Vries himself) is also implausible.

- No evidence that the building technology proposed by de Vries existed during the Proto-Germanic era.

- It also remains unclear what the original adjective *đreuǥa- (vel sim.) would have meant, and how the
filial languages would have developed the semantics their reflexes display. None of them can be related
to building, and few can be easily related even to each other.

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 - OIc. drjúgr means ‘considerable, lasting; proud’, and not ‘tenacious’. It is obviously related to Frankish
driech or Frisian dreegh, but their relationship to OHG trockan or OE dryge ‘dry’ (especially if the latter
contains a long ȳ) faces serious phonological, morphological, and semantic difficulties.

12.3. The original meaning of the root *dhreugh-, which lies behind such formations as OIc. drjúgr ‘considerable’,
Go. driugan ‘wage, carry on’, OE drēogan ‘perform; endure’ (< *đreuǥ-an-), OIc. drýgja ‘perform’ (< *đreuǥijan-),
Old Prussian drūktai ‘firmly’, seems to have been *‘perform; do well; be tough, last’; various derivatives also
developed more distant meanings, cf. Lith. draũgas or Ru. drug ‘friend’, Lith. draugė ͂ or Ru. družína ‘fellow-
ship’, OIc. dróttinn, OE dryhten etc. ‘lord’ (< PGmc. *đruhtina-), etc.

- At first sight, a semantic connection between these formations and the adjective dry can be easily
imagined, but this would imply that the meaning ‘hard, tough’ is secondary, which is highly implausible:

- The meaning ‘dry’ is restricted to West Germanic, whereas the meaning ‘tough’ (etc.) is attested in a
much wider variety of languages (which includes West Germanic itself);

- The sense ‘dry’ itself has to be seen as innovation, but the semantic development ‘hard, tough’ → ‘dry’ is
implausible, and their etymological relationship is dubious.

12.4. On OIc. draugr ‘dry tree steem’: this word supposedly provides the necessary link between the meanings ‘dry’
and ‘firm’ (LP, Cleasby/Vigfusson, IEW, de Vries 1977, Magnússon 1989, EWAia, de Vries & de Tollenaere
2000, among others).

- There is no evidence whatsoever that this word refers to a specifically dry tree stem. In reality, it is not
even known for sure whether draugr means ‘a tree stem’ in the first place.

- This semantic interpretation is not based on its etymology, but mostly on its usage in ancient Icelandic
poetry, where draugr frequently occurs as a member of kennings for a warrior:

draugr hjarar, draugr brimis ‘d. of the sword’;

draugr flatvallar bauga ‘d. of the flat valley of rings’ (i.e. ‘shield’);
draugr Heðins váða ‘d. of Heðinn’s robes’ (i.e. ‘mail’);
herdraugr ‘army d.’;
auðs berdraugr ‘d. carrying wealth’;
éldraugr ‘hail-storm d.’;
jódraugr ‘horse d.’;
þrymdraugr ‘thunder d.’ etc. (examples from LP.84).

- The interpretation of the noun draugr as ‘tree’ in these kennings is based, on the one hand, on the fact
that different words for ‘tree’ (or different species/types of trees) very frequently occur in kennings for a
warrior:

álmþollr unda ‘elm-tree of wounds’;

hjálmrunnr ‘helmet bush’;
fólkmeiðr ‘battle tree’;
hjǫrviðr ‘sword wood’;
viðr brynju ‘wood of mail’;
þollr ǫrþings ‘(pine/fur-)tree of the meeting of arrows’ (i.e. ‘battle’);
hlynr Hristar ‘maple of Hrist’ (valkyrie), etc. etc.

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 - On the other hand, interpreting the word draugr in such kennings as meaning ‘ghost’ (cf. the more
familiar OIc. draugr ‘ghost’) or anything else (‘destroyer’, ‘feeder’, ‘gladdener’, ‘reddener’, as in many
other kennings for warriors) is thought to be implausible, as whereas the word ‘ghost’ generally does not
occur in such kennings, draugr cannot mean ‘destroyer’ etc. for grammatical and etymological reasons.

12.4.1. The interpretation of draugr in such kennings as meaning ‘tree’ is essentially a learned guess. Although this
guess may ultimately be correct, there exists no clear indication that draugr must specifically refer to a dry tree,
a tree stem that has dried up.

12.4.2. This opinion must be solely based on the belief that draugr is somehow related to OE dryge etc. ‒ but here
the argumentation becomes circular: the noun draugr is believed to mean ‘dry tree’ because of the supposed
relationship to the adjective dryge while the latter is believed to be related to draugr because this noun is
believed to mean ‘dry tree’.

13. What about the relationship between OE dryge and Skt. druhila- ‘rough’ (as per Kroonen 2013)?

13.1. The adjective druhila- is poorly attested, and its etymology is otherwise not entirely clear.

13.2. It is speculated in EWAia I.759 that druhila- may be related to OIc. draugr ‘verdorrter Baumstamm’, and
further to other derivatives of PIE *dhreugh- ‘be tough’.

13.3. T. CHOWDHURY (1930-1:33; not discussed in Kroonen 2013) interpreted the etymology of druhila- and
ádrūkṣṇa- very differently, deriving them from the root druh- ‘to harm’.

13.4. If druhila- is related to draugr, it cannot be related to OE dryge, as dryge and draugr are most probably un-
related. However, also the relationship between druhila- and draugr cannot be easily proven, as the semantic
link between them is weak.

13.5. If Chowdhury is right in deriving the sense ‘rough’ from an earlier meaning ‘injurious, harming (to the skin)’,
one may also derive druhila- in a very different way, e.g. from the Sanskrit noun drúh- ‘injury’ (cf. Gk. ¥igiloj
‘grass that goats are fond of’ was built from a‡x ‘goat’; Chantraine 1979:249).

13.6. Is ‘rough’ secondary to original *‘dry’? There is no separate Proto-Indo-European root *dhreugh- ‘dry’, as clear
reflexes with such a meaning are only attested in West Germanic. If the meaning ‘dry’ itself is somehow
secondary – a Germanic innovation – it would become absurd to try deriving the Sanskrit sense ‘rough’ from it.

14. OE dryge < PIE *dhreugh- ‘shake, shiver’, as per IEW? The meaning ‘dry’ must be secondary, then. How?

15. SEMANTIC CHANGE:

15.1. Slight alteration of the original meaning without obscuring the etymological relationships is a banal pheno-
menon. e.g. PGmc. *skakan- ‘shake’ > OE sceacan ‘shake; flee’ > MoE. shake ‘wrestle’, ‘shuffle the cards’, ‘idle
one’s time’, ‘steal; rob’, etc. (OED, Wright 1986:346f.).

15.2. In other cases, the semantic changes become so large that new lexemes may be said to develop. Such cases are
much rarer, but still a number of examples may be adduced:

- Old Icelandic gjóta ‘give birth’ (mostly used of cats, mink, and foxes) < PGmc. *ǥeutan- ‘pour’ (cf. Go. giutan,
Old Saxon giotan, OHG giozzan, OE gēotan ‘pour’; further Gk. cšw, Skt. juhóti ‘pour’ (< PIE *g̑heu-);

- Lith. gìmti ‘be born’ < PIE *g em- ‘come’ (> Go. qiman, Gk. ba…nw, La. venio etc.);

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 - OIc. lesa ‘read’ or Lith. lèsti ‘peck’ < PIE *les- ‘collect’ (cf. Hittite lišš-, Go. lisan ‘collect’ etc.);
- Italian leggere, Spanish leer, French lire ‘read’ < La. legere ‘collect; read’ (< PIE *leg̑- ‘collect’);
- PGmc. *hwaitija- ‘wheat’ < *‘the white flour/grain’ (< virtual *k̑oid--o- ~ PIE *k̑ei-d- ‘shine, be shiny’);
- PGmc. *sanđijan- ‘send’ < PIE *sont-ée- ‘cause to travel’;
- Balto-Slavic *ronkā ‘arm’ < ‘collecting’ (cf. Lith. at-rankà ‘selection’, riñkti ‘collect, select’);
- OE beran, Gothic bairan ‘give birth; bear’, OIc. burr ‘son’, barn ‘child’ ~ PIE *bher- ‘carry’ (~ Skt. bibhárti, Gk.
fšrw, La. fero etc.), likewise Old Church Slavic bьráti ‘take’ (< PIE *bher- ‘carry’);
- Modern Russian desánt ‘airborne troops’ < (ultimately) French descente ‘descent; lowering’, etc.

15.3. The new meaning ‘dry’ for the root *dhreugh- may have developed in those contexts where the verb ‘shake’
was used with the goal of drying sth., e.g. wet hands, washed food products, tools, or of animals drying them-
selves (such as mammals or birds after being exposed to water).

- One can imagine that in these contexts, an original (probably intransitive) verb *dhrugh-é- could have
developed a new meaning ‘dry, become dry’, whereas its causative/iterative *dhrough-ée- would have
acquired a new sense ‘dry sth.’ (> OE drīegan).

16. It is time to look at the structure and development of OE dryge.

16.1. Genetically related forms within Old English: drgað ‘drought’, drgness, drgung ‘dryness’, drgian/drwian
‘dry’ (vi), drgan ‘dry’ (vt), plus two abnormal formations, viz. ge-drcnan ‘dry up’ (vt; as if < *-đrk-) resp.
drēahnian ‘drain, strain out’ (vt; as if < *đrauh-).

16.2. Other West Germanic languages: OHG trokkan, Middle Dutch druge/droge, East Frisian dru(u)ch ‘dry’ (West
Frisian droech etc.; a long list of dialectal Frisian forms is presented in Faltings 2010), and two adverbial forms
in Old Saxon, cf. drucno/drokno ‘dry(ly)’ (Heliand, lines 2936–7), the root-final k of which reminds of OE ge-
drcnan (see 16.1).

16.3. OE ge-drcnan, OS drucno/drokno resp. OE drēahnian are simple aberrant spellings (i.e. ‘spelling mistakes’), as
voiceless consonants instead of voiced ones sometimes occur in texts:

- OLD SAXON:
- kuman for the correct guman ‘person’ (gen. sg.);
- blōtgank for blōdgang ‘dysentery’;
- burklīca for burglīka ‘urbanum’, etc. (examples from Gallée 1910);

- OLD ENGLISH:
- hraecli for hrægle ‘vestment’ (dat. sg.);
- bēahgifa for bēaggifa ‘ring-giver; lord’ (< virtual *ƀauǥa-ǥeƀ-an-);
- sorhlēas for sorglēas ‘sorrowless’, sorhlēoð for sorglēoð ‘sorrowful song’;
- fuhlas for fuglas ‘bird’ (nom./acc. pl.), etc. (BT, Campbell 1959).

17. If OE dryge reflects *dhreugh-, reconstructing *đrūǥi- makes no sense phonologically.

- A short historical *u is also clearly indicated by OHG trokkan resp. OS drukno/drokno;

- These same forms (along with Baltic and Slavic data) leave no doubt that the underlying root was a di-
phthongal aniṭ-root.
- Also the Old English forms drugoð, drugung, drugian/druwian must have had short vowels, reflecting
earlier *đrŭǥ-ōþu-, *đrŭǥ-unǥ-ō, *đrŭǥōjan-. All these formations exhibit the zero grade of the root
*dhreugh-.

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18. What about drge itself? Depending on whether the root vowel was long or short, drge can reflect a number of
different things:

18.1. If the vowel y is short, dryge would reflect an earlier *đruǥ-i-, just like the formations drugoð, drugung, etc.

18.2. But this vowel might also be long, as <y> is frequently written for a historical īe, cf. OE hȳran ‘hear’ (< hīeran
< PGmc. *hauzijan-), ā-lȳsan ‘redeem’ (< -līesan < PGmc. *-lausijan-), etc. In such a case, drȳge can also be
reconstructed as *đrauǥ-i-, or even *đrauǥ-ija-.

19. In Ormulum (early XII c.), the adjective dryge is attested more than once with the spelling <driȝȝe>, cf.
<hæþenn follkess herrte... iss driȝȝe> (Ormulum, line 9883), or <o þe driȝȝe grund> (line 14862). Does this
mean the vowel was short?

- NB that Orm has also doubled his g in the participial form <driȝȝedd> (i.e., driged < OE dryged), which
most likely contained a long vowel (see 27 below).

20. Much more suggestive is the spelling <druige> from the Lindisfarne gospel manuscript, occurring in the
following passage (Mark 11:20; the accompanying Latin text is provided below, following Skeat 1871:91):

(OE:) ...gesegon  fic-beam druige aworden of wyrt[t]rumum...

(La.:) ...uiderunt ficum aridam factam á radicibus...

- The form <druige> clearly implies that the root vowel was rounded, as the spelling <ui> generally
represents the vowel /y/ in early Old English manuscripts (Campbell 1959:17, 79).

21. Dutch can be helpful, too: Modern Dutch oo (as in droog) can reflect either a historical *au or a short *u:

- MoD. groot ‘great’ (< *ǥraut-), boon ‘bean’ (< *ƀaun-), droom ‘dream’ (< *đraum-) etc. vis-à-vis zoon ‘son’
(< *sun-u-; cf. Go. sunus, OE sunu, etc.), voor ‘for’ (< *fur-V-), noot ‘nut’ (< *hnut-), etc.

22. The oldest known Dutch examples exhibit <u>, cf. drugon (dat. pl.) resp. druge (acc. sg.), both occurring in an
early XII c. Dutch translation of the German commentary of The Song of Songs, originally compiled by Williram
of Ebersberg (XI c.). They cannot reflect an earlier *au, and therefore securely indicate an earlier *u (i.e., *ŭ).

23. According to V. F. FALTINGS, evidence for a historical *ū is offered by Frisian (see Faltings 2010:168ff.).

23.1. Frisian exhibit both short and long vowels in different dialects, cf. insular North Frisian driig vs. drüg/drüch,
Continental Frisian dröög/drüüg vs. drög/druch/drüch, etc. Regarding these differences in vowel length, the
author states on p. 170 that “(the original) ū was preserved in East Frisian, but shortened in closed syllables
before -χ- in West Frisian (with the exception of the dialect of Schiermonnikoog)”.

23.2. The reconstruction of an original *ū is not supported by the other Germanic languages or etymology.

23.3. Some of the West Frisian forms that should exhibit the “shortened” vowel have a long vowel instead, e.g.
droechsel/drûchsel ‘siccatief’ (p. 169), droechte/droegte ‘Trockenheit, Dürre’ (p. 169f.);

23.4. Conversely, according to this claim, the East Frisian druge ‘das Trockne’ (p. 169) and a number of dialectal
forms of the adjective ‘dry’ listed on pp. 168f. should exhibit a long vowel, but they do not.

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24. One would gain much more from reversing Faltings’s claim, and assuming that the original vowel was short:
first of all, a short vowel is much more agreeable etymologically. Second, the attested Frisian dialectal forms
that exhibit a long vowel are easy to account for by means of banal open syllable lengthening which Frisian dia-
lects were subject to as well. On the contrary, shortening of an original long vowel in open syllables (i.e. cases
like *drūgi-) is difficult to argue for.

25. CONCLUSION: One has to draw the conclusion that the root vowel in OE dryge, its derivative drygness, the
nouns drugoð, drugung, and the verb drugian/druwian must have been historically short. The adj. dryge reflects
an i-stem *đruǥ-i-.

26. The poorly attested verb gedrycnan ‘dry up, emaciate with disease’ must be an inner-English formation ge-dryg-
nan, built directly from the adjective dryge.

27. The transitive verb drygan/drigan ‘dry’ (pret. drygde/drigde) cannot reflect an earlier factitive *đrŭǥ-jan- ‘make
dry’, since a protoform like this should have produced OE *drycgan [-dʒ-](cf. OE secgan ‘say’ < *saǥwjan-, licgan
‘lie’ < *liǥjan- etc.). It is best analyzed as a variant form of an otherwise unattested *drīegan, which most likely
reflects an old causative *đrauǥijan- ‘cause to dry’ (< virtual PIE *dhrough-ée-). The analysis of drigan as an
earlier causative is well supported by the transitive meaning of this verb, viz. ‘dry sth.’, whereas the spelling y/i
instead of the expected īe is extremely common in the Old English manuscripts.

28. The verb drēahnian ‘drain’ (also spelled drehnigean) does not have any clear parallels in the other Germanic
languages, and it is very poorly attested in early English itself: only a few of times in Old English, and after that,
only in the XVI c., i.e. around the beginning of the Modern English period (cf. OED IV.1015).

28.1. In the earliest texts, the verb drēahnian has a transitive meaning, cf. OE drēahna ūt þurh wyllene clāð ‘drain it
out through a woolen cloth’, and the earliest attested examples in which this verb is used intransitively are
from the Modern English period, cf. let the bloud dreyne out (1587, OED, ibid.).

28.2. Based on its shape, the verb drēahnian may be mechanically reconstructed as an earlier *đrauǥnōjan-, but it
cannot be very old.

28.3. The ancestor of the verb drēahnian may have been built in the following way: first, one’s attention is drawn to
the fairly large number of Old English weak verbs ending in -nian, many of which are obviously secondary:

- willnian ‘desire’ (~ willian, willan ‘id.’);

- sǣtnian ‘lie in wait’ (~ sǣtian, sǣtan ‘id.’);
- ēacnian ‘increase’ (vi; ~ ēacan ‘id.’);
- hæftnian ‘seize, capture’ (~ hæftan ‘id.’);
- þrēatnian ‘compel, urge, force’ (~ þrēatian, þrīetan ‘id.’), etc.

28.4. Such nian-verbs normally possess exactly the same meaning as the verbs they are built to, which makes their
formation seem redundant. However, at some point of the development of Old English, for a reason that is yet
to be understood, this pattern of derivation became quite productive.

28.5. The ancestor of the verb drēahnian must be a product of the proliferation of this derivational pattern, too, and
it must have been built to the historical causative *đrauǥijan- (> OE drȳgan), possibly just like the ancestor of
þrēatnian was built from the ancestor of þrīetan.

29. What do the Old English forms dryggum and drigge with their double gg represent? Marking the length of the
vowel by adding a letter g in front of another letter g seems very unnatural even for a medieval manuscript.

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30. Perhaps, the doubling of the letter g in <dryggum> etc. represents not the length of the vowel, but, instead, the
length of the consonant itself.

31. These spellings suggest that the scribes did not clearly perceive length in the sequences -igV- resp. -ygV-, in
both of which a high front vowel stood next to a phonetic [j], and, accordingly, produced the attested different
spellings.

32. A curious parallel to the confusion regarding the graphic representation of -i/ygV- sequences in Old English
may be adduced from Modern Icelandic, where the correct articulation and transcription of the homophonous
sequences -igi- and -ygi-, which are quite similar to the Old English forms dryggum and drigge shown above,
have been a matter of a long debate (for a summary, see Harðarson 2007):

32.1. The Icelandic sequences -igi- resp. -ygi- have been transcribed in a number of different ways by different Ice-
landic scholars, cf. [-iːjɪ-], [-ɪjːɪ-], [-ijːɪ-], [-ɪijɪ-], [-ɪjjɪ-], [-ijɪ-] (Harðarson 2007:68).

32.2. Various uncertainties about the pronunciation of sound sequences of the -VjV- type, i.e. whether they contain
a diphthong or a monophthong, a true historical j or a historical g pronounced as [j], are clearly illustrated by
spelling mistakes already in the medieval manuscripts, cf. ‹hvsfrǽgia› for the correct húsfreyja ‘house-wife,
mistress’, ‹nygivm› for nýjum ‘new’ (dat.), ‹dæigi› for degi ‘day’ (dat. sg.), etc. (Harðarson 2007:82f.).

33. The Old English spellings dryggum, anwigge etc. most likely represent the same uncertainty on behalf of the Old
English speakers/scribes as to what the actual pronunciation of the underlying words drygum, ānwīge etc. was,
rather than indicating that the vowels preceding the doubled consonants were unambiguously long.

33.1. This is also supported by certain discrepancies in Orm’s spellings, which occur in exactly the same phonetic
environment -igV-, cf. <driȝȝe> ‘dry’ (<o þe driȝȝe grund>; line 14862) vis-à-vis <driȝȝedd> ‘dried’ (<forr þatt
te land wass driȝȝedd all>; line 8625). If <driȝȝe> indeed reflects OE drge, and <driȝȝedd> reflects an earlier
drīged (< *drīeged), the doubling of g would only be justified in the former, but Orm’s spellings indicate that he
treated both in the same way, apparently having judged the vowel to be short (or consonant to be long?) in
both cases.

34. SUMMARY:

34.1. OE dryge originally contained a short vowel , reflecting an earlier *ŭ. A short vowel is supported by other
languages, too. The reconstruction *đrūǥi- faces a number of phonological and etymological problems;

34.2. OE dryge etc. do not reflect PIE *dhreugh- ‘be tough’, and there is no etymological connection to OIc. draugr,
which most probably did not refer to a specifically dry tree stem (the ultimate meaning of this noun remains
uncertain).

34.3. Spelling mistakes in both Old and Middle English manuscripts indicate that length was not clearly
distinguished in sequences of the type -igV-/-ygV-. A more detailed investigation of this matter is needed.

34.4. It is also yet to be figured out what led to the proliferation of nian-verbs in the course of the development of
Old English.

 thank you 

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