- Cleasby, Vigfusson, Craigie, An Icelandic Dictionary2 (Oxford, 1957), p. 473 gives: ótót or ó-tæti n. ‘a wretched, bad creature,’ ótótligr adj. ‘looking wretched and ragged, of sheep or beasts’ and p. 638 tó f…. ‘spinning, weaving;’ Engl, tow Ivar Aasen to; cp. toddi, Dan. uld-tot;… ‘a tuft of wool’. Jan de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Leiden, 1961), gives tó n. 'werg'… fär. tógv, nnorw. tó ‘stoff zum spinnen, art, beschaffenheit’, aschw. tō ‘leinen, flachs’, nschw. dial, to ‘ungereinigte wolle’, adä. to, tov ‘ds.’—>shetl. tu ‘grobe wolle’.—ae. tōw ‘Spinnerei’, got. taui ‘tat, werk’, abl. got. tēwa ‘Ordnung’, langob. zāwa ‘reihe, ableitung’, ahd. zāwa ‘färbung, färbe’ und as. tou ‘werg’, afr. tauw, tow ‘werkzeug, tau’, mnd. touwe, tou ‘werkzeug, webstuhl; tau, seil’, mnl. touwe, touw ‘werkzeug, webstuhl; geschirr’, tou ‘seil, tau’; mhd. gezouwe, gezawe ‘gerät, geschirr; webstuhl; tau, seil….’ Ódó may be merely otó with the South Icelandic lenis t in intervocalic position.
- See Gils Guðmundsson, Öldin okkar—Minnisverð tiðindi 1931–1950 (Reykjavík, 1951), p. 280: pessa dogana hefur flokkur úrvalsleikara frá norska pjóðleikhúsinu verið að leika Rosmersholm eftir Henrik Ibsen í Iðnó ‘The last few days a troop made up of the best actors from the Norwegian National Theater have been giving R. by H. I. in the I.’
- See Gils Guðmundsson, op. cit., p. 14, for a picture of Reykjavik's first city bus and a short write-up dated November 14, 1931.
- Five nouns and five adjectives have not been included in this count because they are not widely disseminated: löggó (ree.) ‘police wagon’ for lögreglubíll, Rèttó (ree.) for Réttarholtsskóli, Miðbó (rec.) for Miðbæjarskóli, Vogó for VogaskóU (three schools in Reykjavík), barnó (rec.) ‘day nursery’ for barnaheimili; drusló (rec.) ‘with disarranged or tattered clothes’ from druslulegur, leiðó (rec.) ‘tedious, irksome’ from leiðinlegur, klunnó (rec.) ‘awkward, clumsy’ from klunnalegur, asnó (rec.) ‘stupid, foolish’ from asnalegur, barnó (rec.) ‘childish, puerile’ from barnalegur. Although I found only one informant who suggested the two meanings for barnó, the possibility of a dual function is interesting.
- Strætó is sometimes inflected like hestur ‘horse’ (gen. sing. in -s and nom. pl. in -ar). Inflected forms of the other Icelandic nouns in -ó are ordinarily avoided (see below).
- My list does not include esperanto (given with this spelling by Jón Ófeigsson, pýzk-Íslenzk orðabák2 [Reykjavik, 1953], p. 218. By itself this noun cannot have exerted a strong influence on the neologisms. It is possible, however, that use of the ó- suffix was supported by esperanto nouns. All nouns in the artificial language end in -o (pronounced by the Icelanders as if it were written -ó. See Kenslubók í Esperanto eftir porstein porsteinsson [Reykjavik, 1909], p. 1). A number of these nouns are very similar to the Icelandic formations, e.g., patro ‘father’, strato ‘street’, hundo ‘dog’. The esperanto movement found an enthusiastic supporter in pórbergur pórðarson (see Kristinn E. Andrésson, Íslenzkar nütimabókmenntir 1918–1948 [Reykjavík, 1949], p. 266f. and pórbergur Pórðarson, Alpjóðamál og Málleysur [Reyjavík, 1933]). Beginning in 1925 pórbergur made a serious study of the language and did everything he could to encourage his countrymen to do likewise. Regular courses of instruction were offered; for a time esperanto lessons were broadcast by the Reykjavík radio station. Icelanders who had their radios turned on during this portion of the program could have picked up some of these ó-formations and have been unconsciously influenced by them in creating their neologisms.
- See Gils Guðmundsson, Öldin okkar—Minnisverð tíðindi 1901–1930 (Reykjavík, 1950), p. 27, for a statement regarding lifandi myndir ‘living pictures’ shown í Iðnaðarmannahúsinu in 1903. See also p. 62 for similar entertainments presented in 1906 í Bárubúð (the name of a temporary theater). The theater which is now called Gamla Bió ‘Old Movie House’ began in 1906. The theater called Nýja Bíó ‘New Movie House’ opened its doors on the 19th of June, 1920 (op. cit., p. 189).
- There is a strong tendency to employ the gender of the replaced noun as the gender of the neologism, e.g., stræcetó is treated as a masculine because strætisvagn is masculine. The school names are masculine because skóli is masculine. Iðnó is a neuter because hús is neuter (now always í gamla Iðnó ‘in old I.’). Iðnó seems to have once been a feminine (í gömlu Iðnó). Perhaps the gender was influenced by Bárubú ð (see footnote 7 above).
- Note that a dog's name Spakó (from spakur ‘quiet, gentle,’ and a nickname Skolkó are mentioned in the passage by Steingrímur porsteinsson cited above. I am quite sure that Skolkó is based on the Icelandic verb skola ‘to wash.’ In Benedikt Gröndal, pórðar saga Geirmundarsonar, p. 57f., Skolkó pours about twenty pails of water on pórður to wash off the filth which came from the ruler's hat (stjórnarhattur). If the derivation I have suggested is correct, the school jargon terms are all imitations of the Latin word draco.
- Eygló is now being used as the name of a Reykjavík business (see Símaskrá ‘telephone book’ [1961], p. 225. A business name based on a foreign formation is Solido (op. cit., p. 134). There was a Plütó-kvintett which is now called Lùdó-sextett.
- To my knowledge this is the first attempt to collect Icelandic neologisms ending in -ó. With the exception of strætó (see V. P. Bérkov, Ísłenzk-rússnesk orðabók [Reykjavík, 1962], p. 718). None of the formations discussed here are included in the printed dictionaries.
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