3 thoughts on “maðelere”

  2. Hi, Hana

    Another fascinating word! It ut me in mind of a dialect word from Northern England, ‘mither’, which means to make a fuss or complain, pester or irritate. Dictionaries suggest its origin as “mid 19th century: variant of moider ‘bewilder, exhaust, wander about aimlessly’, of uncertain origin; perhaps from Irish modartha ‘black, murky, morose’”, but this Old English one seems a more likely candidate. The Irish suggestion feels like a bit of leap (I’m Irish btw).

    Regards Conor

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  3. Hi Will and Conor, thanks for your comments about ‘mither’, a word I did not know. TLDR; I don’t think so.

    The Oxford English Dictionary says the first definition of ‘mither’ (northern and midlands English) is ‘to smother, muffle (up); to encumber, burden’. The date for that is 1847. However, the second definition ‘to bother, pester, worry, irritate’ is cited for the following year, 1848, so practically the same. The definition ‘to ramble, be delirious; to “go on”; to complain, make a fuss, whine’ is implied in contexts from 1860 and 1873, but then appears as a definition in a book called Folk-speech of South Cheshire published in 1887. All of this puts me in the mind that wherever it came from, it had the meaning of ‘encumber’ first, since someone could be encumbered physically or emotionally. This is pretty far in meaning from Old English maðelere, so my guess would be that they are not related.

    The OED does say that ‘mither’ may be a variant of ‘moider’, which has been in English possibly as early as the 16th century (implied) but more definitively in the 18th century. This ‘moider’ is defined as ‘to confuse, perplex, bewilder; to exhaust, overcome, stupefy; (occasionally) to pester’. ‘Moider’ very briefly meant ‘To work very hard, toil’ during the 19th century, but that meaning became obsolete. It has another definition that’s been around since the 19th century: ‘to be delirious, to babble; to wander about aimlessly, ramble’. The OED says ‘moider’ is of uncertain origin; perhaps < Irish modartha dark, murky, morose (Early Irish modarda sullen, sad), also of uncertain origin.

    All this is a bit perplexing (moidering?), but my feeling is that it’s unlikely either word comes from Old English maðelere.

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