Etymology

dwarf

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Today it means: Any member of a race of beings from (especially Scandinavian and other Germanic) folklore, usually depicted as having some sort of supernatural powers and being skilled in crafting and metalworking, often as short with long beards, and sometimes as clashing with elves. Full definition →

Middle English dwergh ← Old English dweorg ← Proto-West Germanic *dwerg
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dwarf · noun, adjective, verb1

  1. Proto-Germanic*dwergaz
  2. Proto-West Germanic*dwerg
  3. Old Englishdweorg
  4. Middle Englishdwergh
  5. English todaydwarf

From Middle English dwergh, dwerw, dwerf, from Old English dweorg, from Proto-West Germanic *dwerg, from Proto-Germanic *dwergaz. Cognate with Scots droich, dwerch (“dwarf, midget”); Old High German twerc (German, Luxembourgish Zwerg (“dwarf”)); Old Norse dvergr (Danish dværg (“dwarf, midget”), Faroese dvørgur (“dwarf”), Icelandic dvergur (“dwarf”), Norwegian Bokmål dverg (“dwarf”), Norwegian Nynorsk dverg, verg (“dwarf”), Swedish dvärg (“dwarf”)); Old Frisian dwirg (Saterland Frisian Dwärch (“dwarf”), West Frisian dwerch (“dwarf”)); Middle Low German dwerch, dwarch, twerg (German Low German Dwarg (“dwarf”)); Middle Dutch dwerch, dworch (Dutch dwerg (“dwarf”)). The Modern English noun has undergone complex phonetic changes. The form dwarf is the regular continuation of Old English dweorg, but the plural dweorgas would have given rise to dwarrows and the oblique stem dweorge- would have led to dwery. These forms are sometimes found as the nominative singular in Middle English texts and in English dialects. A parallel case is that of Old English burg giving burgh, borough, burrow, bury.

DWARF · proper noun2

A play on the related ELF object file format. The backronym “Debugging With Arbitrary Record Formats” has been suggested.

Words from the same roots

Middle Englishdwergh all →

durgy

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.