Tüssama
Tüssama

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the origin of the Estonian verb tüssama ’to deceive, to cheat, to outwit’. It is proposed that tüssama and its dialectal variants of limited distribution – tüsama, tüskama, and tussama – are borrowings from the Middle Low German verb tuschen (tūschen) ’to deceive, to cheat, to mock, to tease; to mislead, to lead astray, to deal with someone, to make a fool of someone’. The occurrence of parallel forms with u and ü (tüsama, tüssama ~ tussama) in Estonian Low German loanwords reflects dialectal variation in the source language. The alternation s(s) ~ sk (tussama, tüsama, tüssama ~ tüskama) points to repeated borrowing: the pronunciation of the Middle Low German internal orthographic cluster sch in the Low German spoken in Estonia was likely [sχ] or [sk], which in Estonian was rendered either as s(s) (tussama, tüsama, tüssama) or sk (tüskama). Previous etymological treatments of tüssama have not sufficiently taken into account the phonetic variability within this word family and its underlying causes; as a result, a convincing etymology has not previously been established.

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