They must certainly have been looked upon, at the first,
as being rustic or dialectal. I have nowhere seen it remarked, and I
therefore call attention to the fact, that a certain note of rustic
origin still clings to many words of this class; and I would instance
such as these: bawl, bloated, blunder, bungle, clog, clown, clumsy, to
cow, to craze, dowdy, dregs, dump, and many more of a like character.
I do not say that such words cannot be employed in serious literature;
but they require skillful handling.
For further information, see the chapter on "The Scandinavian Element
in English," in my _Principles of English Etymology, Series I_.
With regard to dialectal Scandinavian, see the List of English Words,
as compared with Icelandic, in my Appendix to Cleasby and Vigfusson's
_Icelandic Dictionary_. In this long list, filling 80 columns, the
dialectal words are marked with a dagger {+*}. But the list of these
is by no means exhaustive, and it will require a careful search
through the pages of the _English Dialect Dictionary_ to do justice
to the wealth of this Old Norse element.
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