Studi sul lessico dello Statuto della gilda di Santa Caterina in gutnico antico. Una nuova interpretazione del lessema abita

The aim of this study is to investigate the semantics of the lexeme abita attested as hapax legomenon in one of the latest Old Gutnish texts, the so-called Statutes of Saint Catherine’s Guild. On the basis of its cotext, the noun abita could be considered an accusative and it could mean ‘meal, food’. This hypothesis could be confirmed by a whole new etymological proposal for this word: it might be a cognate of Old Gutnish biti (cf. Old Swedish abitning, Old Danish pabit, Old Norse ábítr) and it might stem from the Proto-Germanic masculine noun *ana-bit-an- ‘mouthful, bite’, a reflex of the Proto-Germanic strong verb *ana-bīta-‘to bite (into)’ (cf. Old Saxon anbītan, Old English onbītan and Old Swedish bīta (opp)ā ‘to eat’).