Specific Phase names for the Germans

[Thalatta]

I wasn't satisfied having just said "regarding something in particular": I mentioned Kroonen before because he gives þurpa meaning as "crowd", "which anyway blatantly contradicts your “singular first” interpretation". Then I ended up finding quite some interesting stuff:

In the 2023 dissertation "Unde vēnistī? The Prehistory of Italic through its Loanword Lexicon", by A. M. Wigman, one of Kroonen's PhD students, one can find:

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Sabellic attests to a verbal root *treb- ‘to dwell’, with a root noun *trēb- ‘house’ with cognates in PCelt. *trebā- ‘settlement’ (e-grade), PGm. *þurpa- ‘crowd, settlement’ (zero-grade), and PBalt. *trōb- (o-grade lengthened by Winter’s Law)

It doesn't seem Kroonen disagreed much with his own student for that to end in the PhD thesis… not that we didn't know what "crowd" seemed to support already.

Later on, it's stated that:

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It is interesting to note that most of the Germanic comparanda, where they contain a diagnostic phoneme, can be shown to have entered Germanic before the operation of Grimm’s and Verner’s Laws. It is a pre-Proto-Germanic stage when their consonantism can be reconstructed to match that of the other comparanda most closely

And the relevant row compares Proto-Germanic *þurpa- with Proto-Celtic *treb- (a footnote states that "a note of caution is that it cannot be ruled out that reconstructions involving the operation of Verner’s Law might be misinterpretations", showing that, although a possibility, this is not a mainstream view, unlike what's in the main text).

Finally, it's stated that many things there come "as no surprise if Grimm's Law operated in the mid-first millennium BCE", which shows this is already considered, and bears no major problem towards the reconstructions provided, making evident that this is not an issue:

On 05/11/2026 at 2:07 AM, Genava55 said:

deriving *þurpą from *treb- requires accounting for an unexpected voiceless stop (*p) where a voiced aspirate or plain voiced stop (*b / *bʰ) would regularily be expected under Grimm's Law

Here, why are you only considering one change? There are more as part of Grimm's Law, as From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, by D. Ringe, states: "by the second change subsumed under Grimm's Law PIE voiced stops became PGmc voiceless stops". This turns *b into *p, as expected, and the third example in that very same page is in fact:

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PIE *treb- ~ *tr̥ b- ‘building’ (cf. OIr. atreba ‘(s)he dwells’; secondary zero grade in Lat. trabs ‘beam’) in PGmc *þurpą ‘farmstead, village’ (cf. ON þorp; Goth. þaúrp ‘field’);

Which also includes village as one of the meanings of *þurpą.

[Genava55]

On 06/11/2026 at 12:11 AM, Thalatta said:

Honestly, you need to find some integrity at some point and just be able to say "you know what, I was wrong with that", instead of throwing false accusations and keeping muddying the waters because your baseless arrogance doesn't allow you to recognise when it's resoundingly obvious that you've been completely cornered.

I have no reason to acknowledge any error in this case. It is an established fact that the Épinal-Erfurt glossary mentions the word 'tuun' in only two contexts, and that its only direct translation in this glossary is the Latin 'cors'. There is no explicit link in this glossary between the word 'tuun' and the concept of a village. There is, therefore, no reason to assume that 'conpetum' denoted a village solely based on the glossary. The dictionary I am criticizing (Murray’s New English Dictionary) uses the Épinal-Erfurt glossary to claim that both 'thorp' and 'tuun' meant 'village,' with the dictionary using one term to explain the other. I demonstrated this by examining both entries and tracing them back to their earliest sources, which refer to one another, a clear case of circular reasoning. They could have employed other arguments, but they did not. Consequently, my critique of this academic source is legitimate.

If anyone wishes to argue that 'thorp' or 'conpetum' meant something along the lines of 'village' during that period, they must absolutely support that claim with an argument based on a body of evidence. The same criticism applies to the online edition of the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary that you're using. It offers a translation, but there's no explanation or justification. It's just a raw proposal. Once again, based solely on the glossary, it is difficult to argue that 'conpetum' and 'thorp' referred to a village. I am simply bringing this issue to light and offering an alternative interpretation that is entirely consistent with the primary sources (see below). 

On 06/11/2026 at 12:11 AM, Thalatta said:

Yet what you did is just to shove those sources when you didn't even properly read them. Calling showing you their actual contents "appeal to authority" or "mindlessly parroting" is not going to fool anyone, so you might want to change this old defensive trope, it got a bit repetitive and boring already. Just start by reading your own sources properly, in light of what the point of the discussion actually is, and maybe that will be a bit more productive.

I think you are misunderstanding what I meant by an appeal to authority. My objection is not that you cite academic sources. I have cited academic literature myself throughout this discussion, and I fully recognize its importance. The problem is that you repeatedly cite their conclusions as if the authority of the source were enough to end the discussion, without explaining how those conclusions were reached or addressing the criticism being made against them.

Once again, I want to emphasize this point. What is starting to frustrate me is not the fact that you cite academic sources. What I object to is the way you repeatedly present the conclusion of a dictionary or a scholarly work as if its authority were enough to settle the question, without examining the evidence or explaining the reasoning behind that conclusion.

This is what I meant by an appeal to authority. I was not suggesting that citing specialists is inherently illegitimate. The problem arises when the citation is used as a substitute for an argument. Saying that a dictionary reconstructs 'þurpą' as 'village' establishes that this is an accepted interpretation, but it does not demonstrate why that interpretation is correct, nor does it answer a criticism of the evidence on which it may be based.

That distinction is particularly important here because the interpretation of the sources is precisely what we are debating. If the reconstructed meaning 'village' was inferred partly from later West and North Germanic evidence, it cannot simply be projected back onto earlier or ambiguous attestations and then used to validate the original reconstruction. That creates a real risk of circular reasoning. The conclusion is treated as a premise, and the evidence is then interpreted through the conclusion it is supposed to establish.

The same applies when an editor translates an ambiguous gloss as 'village' or 'hamlet'. That translation is relevant and deserves to be considered, but it remains an interpretation of the primary evidence. It does not make alternative readings illegitimate, especially when the words involved have broad semantic ranges and when other early attestations point toward agricultural land, estates, farms or dependent settlements.

What I find unhelpful is the repeated attempt to short-circuit this discussion by answering a criticism of the sources with the authority of the very sources being criticized. Academic works are not beyond examination. Their conclusions can be questioned by looking at their premises, their choice of evidence and the semantic assumptions behind their translations. That is not a rejection of scholarship. It is how scholarship is supposed to be discussed.

If you want to defend the interpretation 'village', then explain why the primary evidence supports it better than the alternatives. Show why the Gothic evidence should be considered innovative, why the agricultural and estate-related meanings should be secondary, and why the later collective meanings represent inheritance rather than parallel development or semantic expansion. Simply repeating that a dictionary or an editor adopts that interpretation does not answer those questions.

I am perfectly willing to engage with academic sources, including sources that contradict my position. What I do not accept is the suggestion that questioning their reasoning is somehow illegitimate, or that citing their conclusion is enough to close the debate

On 06/11/2026 at 12:11 AM, Thalatta said:

It's you who keeps "dodging the arguments that contradict you", even when using references first put forward by you. The real question here is, why would anyone give more weight to entries from decades old general purpose dictionaries instead of very recent specific studies on the actual matter?

The source I am referring to is a primary source. The Harley Glossary is an 11th-century Anglo-Saxon manuscript (British Library MS Harley 3376) that pairs Latin headwords with Latin and Old English explanations.

‘competum .i. uilla, uel þingstow, uel þrop’ (from The Harley Latin-Old English Glossary published by Robert T. Oliphant)

Here 'competum' is translated by 'villa' (farm, estate), 'þingstōw' (place of assembly) and by 'þrop' (or 'thorp')...

I'm just pointing this out to show you that even several centuries later, 'conpetum' wasn't translated as 'town' or 'village'. It is translated as a place of assembly, a farm or an estate, and 'thorp'. This supports my point regarding the Épinal-Erfurt glossary: the equivalence between 'thorp' and 'tuun' might instead stem from the concept of an enclosure or courtyard.

Which once again is supported by the explanation made by Isidore of Seville:

Original: Conpita sunt ubi usus est conventus fieri rusticorum; et dicta conpita quod loca multa in agris eodem conpetant; et quo convenitur a rusticis.

Translation: Conpita are the places where farmers usually gather; they are called conpita because many country roads converge there (conpetant) and because that is where the farmers meet.

So here I am presenting an argument based on several sources simply to show that there may be another very credible and legitimate interpretation. 

And the idea of challenging the conventional dictionary interpretation, that 'thorp' did not originally refer to a village but rather to a farm or an agricultural estate, is a view supported by other researchers. 

For example, while you cited Ekwall for 'tuun', he himself wrote the following regarding 'thorp':

OE þorp, þrop is a rare word, and its meaning is doubtful. It was certainly used in the sense ‘farm’, possibly in the sense ‘hamlet’. There is no reason to suppose that it meant ‘village’. [...] The original meaning of þorp was ‘newly reclaimed land, new settlement’. It should not be rendered by ‘village’, but rather by ‘farm’.

[Thalatta]

Thanks for answering like a reasonable person. I agree with what you say regarding sources. I just think you are challenging the current sources by using older ones that are actually being criticised by the former in the first place (Oliphant and Ekwall published over 60 years ago, let alone other sources you have quoted). You have to recognise that as circular reasoning. I'll try to demonstrate this as explicitly as possible, while trying to answer what you ask.

You wanted to shut down the "hamlet or village" meaning and imply circular reasoning from the current EE experts with your statement characterising the "village" entry as "completely illogical". You also said "tuun at this time still meant enclosure", and (using the "Compitum = Tūn = Throp" equivalence), "throp in the Épinal-Erfurt is obviously not of village". This line of reasoning is unsubstantiated, since the "village" meaning appeared early during Saxon colonisation, before the EE. You hopefully now agree with that, given that you said "this reflects both the semantic shift toward the meanings of "homestead" and "village", which, according to Ekwall, emerged early on without distinguishing between the two".

Still, this only proves that the 2016 (reviewed in 2022/2023) "village or hamlet" translation is possible, not that it's correct yet. How to get closer to that? Let's look at the current evidence, particularly if it analyses the older evidence. I'm going to use another of your sources: Thorps in a Changing Landscape, from Richard Jones, David N. Parsons and Paul Cullen, from 2011, containing the extremely relevant "Appendix 1: Throp in Anglo-Saxon glosses", which you used to heavily recline on compitum to justify thorp just being a "gathering place". You quoted:

On 10/05/2026 at 11:27 PM, Genava55 said:

throp appears in association with Lat compitum, which primarily means ‘cross-roads’. In one instance it is additionally combined with OE thing-stow ‘meeting-place’. These senses are rather different from what is generally suggested by Germanic cognates and later English evidence, but they have been admitted into the dictionary definitions of throp, have been sought in some place-names and have coloured discussions of the Germanic term’s ultimate etymology

and then you said:

On 10/05/2026 at 11:27 PM, Genava55 said:

The current theory regarding the Anglo-Saxon period is that “þrop” referred to an estate acting also as a gathering place for peasants who collectively managed land, and that there was a semantic shift in its meaning to refer first to the entire community and then to a village.

Which I don't find convincing given the current evidence. So I went to your source, and found that then it says:

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closer inspection of the glosses, however, suggests that it is not at all certain that either ‘cross-roads’ or ‘meeting-place’ was ever a straightforward translation of OE throp

and:

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it is not enough to say that throp in this complex is given as an equivalent to Lat compitum ‘cross-roads’. Rather, throp and tūn were together originally associated with compitum. Since tūn is an enclosure and settlement term – the semantics of which are fairly well understood and do not encompass ‘cross-roads’ – it is necessary to question how the original glossator understood the Latin word: this will inevitably have implications for our understanding of throp

and then mentions the "plausible guess" that all could have come from "qui alieni a ciuitate Dei ex locorum agrestium conpitis et pagis pagani uocantur", that is, "those who, alienated from the kingdom of God, are called ‘pagans’, from the conpitis and pagis of rural places", concluding that:

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certainly, if this were the source of the original gloss it is easy to see how terms for rural settlements might have been provided for the Latin words which actually mean ‘cross-roads’ and, perhaps, ‘districts’ respectively. Indeed, in this context throp and tūn, straightforwardly denoting small, agrarian settlements, look rather more appropriate than a term meaning ‘cross-roads’

And you saw but omitted all that, because that's followed by the sentences you quoted from Isidore of Seville regarding what a compitum is, and then even said:

On 10/05/2026 at 11:27 PM, Genava55 said:

So, once again, it’s a place, a courtyard, or an enclosure. It makes so much more sense with the word "tuun" that I don't understand how you can't see it. If, in the same glossary, the word "tuun" is also translated as "enclosure," it cannot mean anything else in this context.

when actually that source, just after the Isidore of Seville statements, adds:

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Isidore correctly relates the word to the verb competere ‘to meet, come together’. Although the primary sense of the noun would appear to be simply ‘junction, cross-roads’, subsequent development of these junctions as meeting-places for the rural community is readily comprehensible, and this usage was presumably in Orosius’s mind when he wrote his passage. On various counts, then, it is unlikely that the Anglo-Saxon who glossed compitum with tūn or throp was searching for words that meant ‘cross-roads’. Had that been the intention then tūn, at least, would surely not have been chosen. And if the source of the Latin word was Orosius’s text, or something similar, then ‘cross-roads’ is not really the operative sense. In a context where the author is describing the rural haunts of unsophisticated people, compitum may easily have been misunderstood, or partially understood, as referring to small rural settlements

And the source continues a bit regarding these things, stating that glosses

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tend to suggest – especially in the explicit pairing of throp with tūn – that the intended sense here, as in place-names and later records of English, is basically ‘(small, rural) settlement’.

And that chapter ends in that page, not changing the conclusion that both throp with tūn refer to "small agrarian settlements", and compitum is not a "straightforward translation", but probably "misunderstood, or partially understood, as referring to small rural settlements" by "unsophisticated people" (to which I independently hinted before with another source you didn't find convincing, even after you had read that).

This is why I say you can't just give more weight to older entries lacking in analysis than to current relevant discussions directly criticising them. And please notice that your quoting highly misrepresents what's being said: you end up concluding the opposite of what's actually said. I could go on ranting about this, but I'll refrain because you were respectful in your previous answer. They clearly explained what you quoted in order to promptly criticise it. I leave "hidden" screenshots of this nice 6-page long appendix for anyone to read it:

Spoiler

 

There are many other things worth checking from that source about thorps which directly imply them being more than a single farmstead, for example this quote explicitly stating that that would just be the case for quite derelict ones:

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Danelaw thorps first recorded before 1500 (264 out of 576) are now completely lost or are represented by little more than a single farmstead

One has to bear in mind that certain thorp characteristics don't necessarily apply to þurpą, being a cognate many centuries after the fact. All this focuses only on supporting the EE translation being a small settlement.

 

I think it's then clear that there's no problem with the current evidence taking throp and tūn as a settlement larger than a single farmstead. This association can be tracked all the way back to þurpą, more recently shown in Kroonen's PhD student use of "settlement" (its association with "crowd" can also be found in other languages, that source mentions it for OHG, and it happens in Spanish with "pueblo", of course independently), and clearly present in the Celtic branch through PIE treb, a canonical example of Grimm's Law, as I've shown.
 

In summary (and if you think I'm misrepresenting something, briefly point it out), because again, all has to be seen at the same time to make the actual point:

Þurpa: at least the meanings crowd, settlement and hamlet are justified (by your own sources). While (full-blown) village might be an exaggeration, it is irrelevant for Phase I, as is the additional farmstead meaning, considering the nature of these settlements, and how Romans saw them. Gothic cannot be reliably used for this word in particular since there's only one attestation. You tried to argue that the settlement meaning only came much later in Old High German and Old Norse, but earlier Old English attestations prove that this cannot be the case, fact reinforced by the many languages presented in the Celtic branch, both reconstructed and attested, from where a size estimation of this larger than a farmstead settlement was also obtained. Even when for a few Celtic languages þurpą cognates are less settlement-like, they are still more so than their corresponding haimaz cognates, an extremely important point. All this shows that þurpą early on meaning only a single farmstead seems unlikely. Its meaning refers more often to a small settlement.

Haimaz: at least the meanings home, homely and homestead are justified (by your own sources). Gothic has a stronger case here, although it translates haimaz cognates as country at least once, inverts wīhsą cognates urbanistic order, and all this is centuries after the fact. You tried to argue for it meaning settlement using Old High German, but this is ten centuries after the fact. Haimaz cognates ended up meaning settlement as in "someone's home", but this was not its original meaning, not only because the homely meaning is ever present and ambiguating in the Germanic branch, but because it's astoundingly dominant in the Celtic branch, showing that by the time PIE split into these two branches there was probably no settlement meaning yet, and the lack of any horizontal transfer hints to a rather late than early development, but it cannot be said at which point between Proto-Germanic and Gothic this meaning appeared. All this shows that haimaz early on meaning mainly settlement seems unlikely. Its meaning refers more often to a home.

In conclusion, I do think þurpą is a better candidate than haimaz for a Phase I Proto-Germanic settlement, and that the accepted reconstructions are properly backed up by the latest evidence, which contains plenty of thoughtful criticism of the older evidence, as shown.

Edited 1 hour ago by Thalatta