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35,981 English word records · 45,491 etymology sections in this online subset
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bigEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Inherited from Northern Middle English big, bigge (“powerful, strong”), possibly from a dialect of Old Norse. Ultimately perhaps a derivative of Proto-Germanic *bugja- (“swollen up, thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”), in which case big would be related to bogey, bugbear, and bug. Compare dialectal Norwegian bugge (“great man”), Low German Bögge, Boggelmann.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗bigEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Inherited from Northern Middle English big, bigge (“powerful, strong”), possibly from a dialect of Old Norse. Ultimately perhaps a derivative of Proto-Germanic *bugja- (“swollen up, thick”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bu- (“to swell”), in which case big would be related to bogey, bugbear, and bug. Compare dialectal Norwegian bugge (“great man”), Low German Bögge, Boggelmann.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗bigEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English biggen, byggen, from Old Norse byggja, byggva (“to build, dwell in, inhabit”), a secondary form of Old Norse búa (“to dwell”), related to Old English būan (“to dwell”). Cognate with Danish bygge, Swedish bygga.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗bigEnglish (en) · Etymology 3Source text
From Middle English byge, from Old Norse bygg (“barley, probably Hordeum vulgare, common barley”), from Proto-Germanic *bewwuz (“crop, barley”). Cognate with Old English bēow (“barley”).
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗INDEPENDENT SOURCE LIBRARY
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Mayhew–Skeat (1888)
1888; pinned HTML transcription updated October 28, 2024The query “big” cannot be resolved without D1. No static search results are fabricated.
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