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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The explanation of Middle English run presents many difficulties. These could easily be solved if one succeeded in proving, or at least in making probable, the existence of an Old English runnan.
1 About 1325 Metr. Hom. runnande (NED).
2 Sievers, Angels. Gramm. 3, par. 386, anm. 2, 3.
3 Part. Pres: 1330 Arth. and Merl. arnand, 13 … K. Alis. (Laud MS.) arnyng (NED).
4 The form renna is a later development; the e is taken over from the causative; rhymes in Scaldic poems testify a rinna as well as a brinna.
5 Jordan, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik (Heidelberg, 1925), par. 36.
6 It may be observed again and again that certain sound changes recur at different periods in the same language group.
7 Jordan, op. cit., par. 34, 2.
8 Noreen claims that the e in brenna, renna as well as the i in brinna and rinna can be explained as an old change n:nn within the inflectional system. See his Geschichte der nordischen Sprachen 3 (1913), par. 235.—This is not quite convincing, since a Germanic verb could probably, according to its structure, be derived only from the plural form 
ṇvánti and not from the singular, which has an element -eu- (in 
ṇóti). The influence of the causatives brenna and renna is to be seen here already.
9 Walde-Pokorny, i, 796.
10 The same root with the vowel i in: Middle Low German triseln, Westphal. triseln “rollen, taumeln,” Dutch trillen “zittern.” Walde-Pokorny, i, 796.
11 Noreen 272, Anm. 2(rn>nn); however, spenna and sperna probably unrelated.
12 As speornan is rather late, it may be a late formation, perhaps by analogy to eornan.
13 One might think of a reduction dre- from a dissyllabic base dere- (compare Homer 
att. 
; see Specht, K. Z. 59, 117). That dere- is originally disyllabic is made probable by drū- in OIcel. trúÐr, “Gaukler,” OE. trúÐ, “Possenreisser” = OIrish drūth, “Narr.”
14 Various attempts at explanation are given in Walde-Pokorny, i, 589.
15 rinnan might also be (in part), but not very probably, a development of OInd. ríṇvati, (by the side of 
).
16 Concerning the forms cf. Walde-Pokorny, ii, 168; i, 138.
