Re: Scots.

2008/7/19 taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...>:
> * Benct Philip Jonsson said on 2008-07-19 16:15:08 +0200
>> J. 'Mach' Wust skrev:
>> > On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:25:47 -0500, Eric Christopherson
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Is the word <sore(ly)> meaning "very" the same
>> >> word as the word <sore> having to do with pain?
>>
>> As it happens Icelandic preserves _sár_ as both a
>> noun and an adjective but not the verb, while
>> Swedish has only the noun _sår_ (the normal word
>> for 'wound') and the verb _såra_ 'injure, hurt'.
>> I don't know about Danish (Lars_1) or Norwegian
>> (Lars_2, Kaliessin?)
According to Hellquist (Svensk etymologisk ordbog, 1911), adj. _såra_
exists in Swedish dialects with the sense we're talking about.

Danish has it as well, besides the noun and verb for 'wound', mostly
usable now in fixed (adverbial) expressions _såre godt_, _såre vel_,
_såre simpelt_, _såre enkelt_. Older usage also had _så såre_ = 'as
soon as'.

> There's also (don't know if it is from the same word):
>
> særs = especially, can be used as "very"
> særlig = especially, can be used as "very"
> sært = strange, weird, unusual
>
> "særs idiotisk", "veldig idiotisk" = especially/very idiotic
These exist in Danish as well, but they're from the dative of the
reflective pronoun, _sér_. _Sa/þat er sér_ in Old Norse would have
meant something like 'He/it is by him/itself', which inevitably got
interpreted as an adjective meaning 'odd', 'strange' or 'special'.

Lars