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This column began in a little restaurant in Dunnville, Ontario, where I sometimes take breakfast. It arose out of puzzlement by myself and some local companions about how to pronounce the commercial name Husqvarna, a Sweden-founded and now worldwide maker of chainsaws, industrial equipment, home garden equipment, etc. etc. After listening to one stalwart try “hussi-kuh-varina,” I tried to look it up, but even the company’s website offers no help in saying one of the most mispronounced brand names in the world. Finally a Swedish gentleman suggested it is properly said as hoos-KVAR-na. It is a compound Swedish noun made up of hus + qvarna. hus = Swedish ‘house’ + Old Swedish qvärn ‘mill’ = millhouse Husqvarna is the name of a town in Sweden in which the company was founded. The little town took its name from a flour mill beside a local river. Old Swedish qvärn, qvarn means ‘a mill.’ The Modern Swedish reflex is kvarn. Husqvarna also suggests that the miller himself and his family may have lived in the building that housed the ancient millstone beside the river Humblaruma, hence the name of the house (husqvarn ‘millhouse’) quite probably preceded the name of the town. In other words, the mill was built first and so gave its name to the subsequent town that may have grown up around the activities of the flour mill. English once had a similar word, now obsolete, with the order of the roots reversed, namely, quern-house ‘millhouse.’
Quern is an English Word Related to Qvärna Qvärn and kvarn share a root word with the now rare English word quern. A quern was a small set of grinding stones for grain. The upper stone was rotated by hand and rubbed over the grain being ground on the lower stone. Quern also meant a hand-turned peppermill or mustard-grinder. The Earliest Querns By about 1000 BCE, various civilizations had developed quern mills, principally so that single families could make flour for flatbread cakes, the earliest wheaten bread. A quern mill consisted of a flat circular stone turned in a circular motion over another flat circular stone which crushed grain between its two flat surfaces.
As querns became refined, holes were made in the top stone to introduce the grain or to hold a handle that could be used to turn the stone easily. The small early hand mills were enhanced in size by some organized societies such as the Romans who used donkeys and slaves to provide the power to turn larger and larger grinding stones.
Ancient Greek Proverb about Mills Proverbs are often metaphors drawn from daily life. There was a familiar folk saying in ancient Greece concerning how slow but how exact divine justice, even divine retribution, could be: “The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.” That is, sooner or later, every mortal receives their just desserts, whether they be reward or punishment. Zeus ferrets out the sinners and strikes them down. Note that the Attic Greek word for mills (muloi) is derived from the same Indo-European root as the English word mill.
Quern’s Cognates in Other Indo-European Languages This word for a grinding mill for cereal grains or malt is very old, appearing in Proto-Indo-European and being spread from Europe to India in the many languages that sprang from PIE. Here are some of the reflexes of the PIE root in various languages: Old English (Anglo-Saxon) cwyrn, cweorn ‘small, hand-operated grain mill’ Old Frisian quern Middle Dutch querne ‘handmill’ (Modern Dutch kweern) Middle Low German querne Old High German quirna, kurn ‘millstone, mill’ Middle High German kürne, kürn, kurn Old Icelandic kvern handmill (Modern Icelandic kvörn), Old Swedish qvärn, qvarn mill (Swedish kvarn), Danish kværn Gothic -qairnus mill (in asiluqairnus donkey mill), Russian zernov ‘millstone’ Polish zarna ‘millstone’ Lithuanian girnos ‘millstone’ Sanskrit graven ‘pressing stone’
Etymology of Qvarna & Quern There are three possible ancient roots of the English word quern. 1. The ultimate origin of these quern-words may be akin to the root in our English word corn, an Indo-European root that produces cognates like Old High German and Old Norse korn ‘grain,’ Gothic kaurn, Latin granum ‘origin of our English word grain’, Greek geras old age, Sanskrit jirna worn out, frail, old. The prime meaning of the IE root is ‘ripening.’ North Americans must remember that corn meaning ‘maize’ is a very late sense of the word indeed. Corn’s first meaning in Old English was the hard seed of any of the cereal grains or any small hard particle. Older English speaks of “a corn of salt” where the word corn is a synonym for a grain. In England the modern term corn encompasses all the cereals: wheat, rye, barley, oats, maize, rice, etc. In rural England corn generally refers to wheat. Maize was first termed “Indian corn” which was later shortened by Americans to corn.
2. The second but less likely Indo-European source of our English word quern may be found in the zero grade form of PIE *-gur whose prime meaning was ‘heavy.’ *-Gur produced later reflexes like Latin gravis ‘heavy’ and Greek baros ‘heaviness.’
3. I believe the most likely ancient etymon of our English word quern is the one that gave us our word for the minor medical problem, clavus durus, that is, a hard corn on the foot, a horny hardening of the epidermis caused by friction or pressure. This doublet of our word horn came from Latin cornu > Middle French corne > Middle English coorne. This corn is akin to Old High German and Old Norse horn, Gothic haurn, Latin cornu ‘horn,’ Latin cerebrum ‘brain’ and Greek keras ‘horn.’
A small corn on the outer edge of a toe
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