Abstract The Germanic verb hlaþanan, usually glossed ‘to load’, has been wrongly evaluated because of a failure to examine the material in sufficient depth as regards both phonology and semantics. The Old High German evidence indicating a regular Verner’s Law alternation in the paradigm is supplemented not only by the Gothic past participle -hlaþans* with analogical voiceless spirant but also by modern East and North Frisian data. This points to a pre-Germanic proto-form with root-final *-t (Part 1). As emerges from a study of the situation in North Germanic, a core meaning for the Germanic verb appears to have been ‘to lay something down (flat)’, from which development to ‘to stack’ and ‘to load’ is straightforward (Part 2). Potential cognates exist in Balto-Slavic, but the exact formal relationships are unclear (Part 3).

Abstract It is suggested that the text of Day 10 of the Old Frisian Version of ‘The Fifteen Days before Doomsday’ be understood not as saying the world reverts to its state before the Creator made it, but when He made it. This entails a reinterpretation of the form er in the clause in question. In Day 14, the word dāthon ‘dead ones’ is problematic, because the medial consonantism -th- is not immediately reconcilable with the accepted interpretation as the substantivized adjective dād (we expect medial -d-). A solution is provided by the extinct modern East Frisian dialect of the island of Wangerooge (which is closely related to the Riostring dialect of the Old Frisian text). It attests the lexeme dooeTH (m.) ‘der Todte, die Leiche’. Assuming such a form existed already in Old Frisian solves the problem.

It is pointed out that ūtfūs in line 33a of the Old English poem Beowulf is not a hapax legomenon, as it appears in two late Middle English verse texts. It is also argued that the first word of the half line, manuscript īsiġ, is a hapax legomenon in English, if emendation to īliġ is accepted. The distribution of this latter adjective in West Germanic and its meaning are discussed.

It is suggested that the Old English adjectives ge-ean and ge-cealf, each attested once in the same passage, could refer not only to pregnant livestock but also to mothers with their newborn young (as proposed by Osthoff in 1895). The twice occurring sequence gefearh sugu, which is usually taken to be a compound, is here analysed as consisting of a third such adjective used attributively before the noun; as the feminine nominative singular of a heavy-syllabled adjective, it is endingless. This appears to be a return to an earlier view. A fourth example, ge-fol, recorded once, is also discussed. The formation of these adjectives is briefly treated, as is the PGmc noun *auna- lamb presupposed by the first adjective, together with its presumed relationship to Latin agnus and further cognates. Evidence for the derived class II weak verb *aunon (reflected in OEeanian*) in the Germanic languages is presented.

The paradigms of the third person anaphoric pronoun in West Germanic show a split between Ingvæonic and non-Ingvæonic languages. The Ingvæonic dialects have numerous forms with initial h-, in contrast to non-Ingvæonic, where—corresponding to h-—vocalic or s-onsets are found. This divergence makes it difficult to envisage what the Proto-West Germanic set of forms looked like. The aim is to explore whether it is possible to reconstruct a common West Germanic paradigm from which both types developed. The answer turns out to be ‘yes’, thanks to the crucial evidence of Frisian. The article also rejects the view that Germanic attests the alleged Indo-European pronominal stem *syo-/*tyo-.

West Germanic is the most heterogeneous branch of the Germanic family. Some have doubted its "original unity" and seen sub-divisions as "primary entities". Nonetheless, numerous shared isoglosses, most of them innovations and several of them ordered, establish a Proto-West-Germanic stage. The most significant internal divide was Ingaeonic versus non-Ingvaeonic. The Ingvaeonic features can be grouped into two sets: those that probably post-date Proto-West-Germanic and those that appear to be shared with North Germanic and so would pre-date the West Germanic stage. The intermittent participation of High German in the innovations undergone by the other North and West Germanic languages is puzzling. Further isoglosses affecting only North Germanic and (sub-dialects of) Old English can also be identified.

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