Comments on Etymology of "ohyra"?
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Etymology of "ohyra"?
I'm wondering about the origin of the Swedish word ohyra (vermin). Someone humorously suggested that this would be because vermin are unwanted guests not paying rent (hyra), though they had no source for that.
I did a little bit of research and Google dropped me in Svensk Etymologisk ordbok (The Swedish Etymology Dictionary), first edition from the year 1922. It suggests that the word originates from German ungehûren/ungeheuer, which supposedly (I don't speak German) means demons, beasts, behemoths etc. I find that strange, since vermin are typically small: lice, rats and so on. And it's quite far from ungeziefer.
The source also claims that the origin of the word is that using the words lice, rats etc directly would have been a taboo.
Is this source correct/trustworthy? Does the word originate from German? Any idea how old the word could be?
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Quoting from https://svenska.se/tre/?sok=ohyra&pz=1:
sedan första årtiondet av 1500-talet (Helige mäns lefverne); fornsv. ohyra ’odjur; stor mängd’; urspr. ’ngt otäckt, otrevligt’
See more at SAOB over there.
If I am reading that correctly, and my Swedish is not very good, the original meaning was something not nice.
Note that in modern Norwegian there are concepts such as uvær (bad weather or storm, vær is weather), udyr (monster, dyr is animal), uår (year with bad crops, år is year), så adding prefix u-, which corresponds to the Swedish o-, is a way of making things bad.
Hyra
The same source gives an etymology for hyra:
lågty. hüre
Low German hüre, which is supposed to have the same meaning.
Danish and Norwegian use leje/leie/leige/leiga for "to hire", though Swedish also has att leja: https://svenska.se/tre/?sok=leja.
"Hyre" in Norwegians and Danish is usually naval terminology: https://ordbok.uib.no/perl/ordbok.cgi?OPP=hyre , https://ordnet.dk/ddo/ordbog?query=hyre
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