Gothic leiþu, “strong drink; fruit wine?” and its Cognates in the Germanic Languages

Gothic leiþu, “strong drink” and its cognates are attested broadly throughout the historical stages of the Germanic languages, but it no longer survives in the modern languages.1 In its respective textual sources, leiþu most often appears in reference to alcoholic drinks, as in the following excerpt from Wulfila’s Gothic Bible: “wairþiþ auk mikils in andwairþja fraujins jah wein jah leiþu ni drigkid”2 (For he will become great in the sight of the Lord, and he will not drink wine and leiþu). Since a large proportion of fundamental work in Germanic philology has been conducted by German-speaking scholars, especially during the nineteenth century, modern students of Germanic philology and historical Germanic linguistics often learn the older Germanic languages (especially Old High German, Old Saxon, and Gothic) using later editions of grammars and readers originally published by nineteenth-century philologists. A preponderance of primers and reference materials created by German-speaking philologists translate leiþu in its many contexts and across numerous older Germanic languages as Obstwein, “fruit wine”; however, this interpretation usually results in awkward and unidiomatic translations, as in the example above: “for he will become great in the sight of the Lord, and he will not drink wine and fruit wine.” In this study, I shall show that leiþu did not refer primarily to fruit wine, but rather encompasses a broad meaning throughout time and space and within the individual Germanic languages; this broad meaning is perhaps best conveyed with the English phrase “strong drink” or German starkes Getränk, “strong drink.” The study is divided into five sections: In Section I, I discuss the reflexes of leiþu in the older Germanic languages and their apparent suggested meaning. In Section II, I review the etymological literature on leiþu in order to determine whether its etymon and cognates in Indo-European