The story
- Proto-Germanic · derived from*gaumaz
- Old Norse · derived fromgaum
- English todaygormless
From dialectal English gaum (“heed, attention”) + -less (“without”), from Old Norse gaum, from Proto-Germanic *gaumaz, *gaumō (“heed, attention”). The ‘r’ found in this spelling is a vowel-lengthening device common in non-rhotic dialects of English.
Words from the same roots
Old Norsegaum all →
gaum
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.