Reconstruction talk:Proto-Germanic/wai

Etymology

I modestly posit further Proto-Indo-European *bʰēdʰ-, the lengthened grade of *bʰedʰ- (“to bend, to press”) etc. (q.v.), as per biada (“woe”) Zezen (talk) 21:10, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

How would the PIE form evolve into the Germanic form? —CodeCat 21:15, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Noun?

Looking at its descendants (en. woe, de. Weh, nl. wee, etc. are all nouns), and the fact that woe is something that befalls people in its common use as an interjection (woe on thee! wai þus! etc.), would this not be a noun first, from which its use as an interjection later originated? In Gothic (although it is never inflected) we never find wai by itself: it is always combined with a dative pronoun to indicate that it is a thing that befalls someone. It even seems to have a combining form in the compound 𐍅𐌰𐌾𐌰𐌼𐌴𐍂𐌾𐌰𐌽 (wajamērjan), which I would not expect to be the case with an indeclinable interjection (which surely would combine as is, as *𐍅𐌰𐌹𐌼𐌴𐍂𐌾𐌰𐌽 (*waimērjan)?). — Kleio (t · c) 18:08, 13 March 2017 (UTC)