draugr

• draug

draugr (plural draugrs or draugar)

1. (Norse mythology) An undead creature from Norse mythology, an animated corpse that inhabits its grave, often guarding buried treasure.

• (12th century Icelandic) IPA^(key): /ˈdrɑuɣr̩/

From Proto-Norse *ᛞᚨᚱᚨᚢᚷᚨᛉ (*dᵃraugaʀ, “revenant, ghost, phantom; deceiver”), from Proto-Germanic *draugaz (“delusion, mirage, illusion”). Akin to Old Saxon gidrog (“delusion”) and Old High German bitrog (“delusion”), gitrog (“ghost”). See also Finnish raukka.

Also borrowed into the Sami-languages through an earlier Proto-Norse form, see Proto-Samic *rāvkë.

Related by analogy to etymology 2, such as drumbr (“log; peasant”), dræmr (“slow”); Scanian dråmer, dråmår (“devil”); Dutch drommel, drommels (“devil”); Latin drummedaris (“slow human”); Swedish drög (“nut, idiot”), dröger (“slow human”); Danish drog (“a good-for-nothing”); Scots draighie, draich, draick (“a lazy, lumpish, useless person”), draich (“slow, spiritless”).

draugr m (genitive draugs, plural draugar)

2. (folklore) based on descendants + cognates: malevolent supernatural (with magic powers) spook
   • Þáttr Þorsteins skelks, in 1827, S. Egilsson, Þ. Guðmundsson, Fornmanna sögur, Volume III. Copenhagen, page 200:

     Hann kyndir ofn brennanda, sagði draugrinn.

     "He kindles furnace's fire", said the ghost.

   1. the badly dead

      Hyponym: Draugadróttinn (Ruler of the dead: Odin)

   2. corporeal or manifested revenant, especially those defending their burrial, with vampiric (infectious) traits
   3. undead haunting as a malevolent supernatural spirit/being (troll, devil, hobgoblin, nixie etc)

      Synonym: troll

   4. spectre

      Synonym: troll

3. (Old East Norse) based on descendants + cognates: deceiver; nomen agentis to an unattested cognate to Old Saxon bidriogan, Old High German triogan (“to mislead, deceive”)^[1]

• Draugadróttinn (Ruler of the dead: Odin)

• Faroese: dreygur
• Icelandic: draugur
• Norn: *drau, *drou; *drog (compare 18th c. Norwegian drau → drauv, drov)
  • Scots: drow, trow (effected by troll)
    • English: drow, trow
• Middle Norwegian: draug, drau
  • Norwegian: draug, drøg, drog, drau, drauv, drøv, drov
• Old Danish: drog
• Old Swedish: *drøgher, *draugr
  • Swedish: drög, dröger, draugr (dialectal, archaic/obsolete)
• Scanian: *drauker, *drau (“devil”)
  • Scanian Swedish: dråker, dråkel, dråe, dråmer, dråmår (“devil”)
    • ⇒ (definite form) drån, dronn, dröken, dråmårn (“the devil, Satan”)
    • ⇒ dråkerskap, dråmerskap, drånskap (“devilment, devilry, mischief”)
• → Danish: drauge, dravge (learned)
• → English: draugr, draug (learned)
  • → English: Draugr
• → Swedish: draug (learned)

Possibly a nominalisation of Proto-Germanic *draugiz (though one would expect the vowel to display umlaut) or related to drjúgr.

draugr m

2. (poetic) dry wood; tree trunk
3. (poetic) (from the sense of tree-trunk) man, warrior

• Icelandic: draugur

• Richard Cleasby; Guðbrandur Vigfússon (1874), “draugr”, in An Icelandic-English Dictionary, 1st edition, Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, page 102
• Zoëga, Geir T. (1910), “draugr”, in A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, Oxford: Clarendon Press, page 92; also available at the Internet Archive
• drög in Rietz, J. E. Svenskt dialektlexikon