Etymology: < greet v.¹

Etymology: < greet v.²

Etymology: Common West Germanic: Old English grœ́tan, weak verb, corresponds to Old Frisian grêta, Old Saxon grôtian (Dutch groeten), Old High German gruoȥȥan (Middle High German grüeȥen, modern German grüszen) < West Germanic *grôtjan, related to *grôto-z, *grôtâ, noun (Middle High German gruoȥ, modern German grusz, masculine; Middle Dutch groet, masculine and feminine, Dutch groet, masculine). The primary sense is uncertain; the senses of early occurrence in continental Germanic are ‘to approach’, ‘to call upon’, ‘to provoke or compel to action’, ‘to attack’, ‘to irritate, annoy’, ‘to address, salute’, In modern German and Dutch as in English the sense ‘salute’ has become the prominent one, such other senses as survive being now apprehended as transferred from this. (The noun, which may be only a back-formation, expresses the action of the verb in all senses.) The ultimate etymology is equally uncertain with the radical meaning; many scholars refer the word to Old Aryan *ghrōd- : ghrēd- to resound (see greet v.²), on which supposition the primary sense should be ‘to call on’; another view is that the Germanic root *grôt- is an extension of the root which appears in Greek as χρ with the sense ‘to approach closely, touch’, etc.

Etymology: Two distinct but synonymous words have here coalesced: (1) Old English grǽtan (only in Anglian form grétan ), presumably a reduplicated strong verb with past tense *grét , past participle *grǽten (a weak past participle occurs once in the plural begrétte ), corresponding to Old Saxon grátan (only once in past tense griat , v.r. griot ) to weep, Middle High German graȥen (weak) to cry out, rage, storm, Old Norse gráta , past tense grét (Swedish gråta , Danish græde ), Gothic grêtan , past tense gaigrôt < Germanic *græ̂tan , < Old Aryan root *ghrēd- : ghrōd- found also in Sanskrit hrād to resound (compare greet v.¹); (2) Old English gréotan (past tense *gréat, *gruton, past participle *groten) = Old Saxon griotan, greotan; possibly evolved from a past tense of the reduplicated verb grǽtan; possibly a compound with prefix *ga- of the synonymous strong verb found in Old English as réotan. Prof. Sievers suggests that both verbs may descend from a common pre-Germanic root *ghrēud-, the long diphthong being differentiated into Germanic æ̂ and eu. The gloss ‘mereo [= mæreo ], groeto’ in the Corpus Glossary is difficult to explain; most probably groeto is simply miswritten for gréto (or gréoto ) owing to confusion with greet v.¹