- published: 02 Oct 2015
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In historical Germanic society, nīþ (Old Norse: níð; Old English: nīþ, nīð); was a term for a social stigma implying the loss of honour and the status of a villain. A person affected with the stigma is a nīðing (Old Norse: níðingr, Old English: nīðing, nīðgæst, or Old High German: nidding), one lower (cf. modern English beneath and modern German nieder) than those around him. Middle English retained a cognate nithe, meaning "envy" (cf. modern German neid/neidvoll), "hate", or "malice."
A related term is ergi, carrying the connotation of "unmanliness".
Ergi and argr or ragr can be regarded as specifying swearwords. Ergi, argr and ragr were the severe insults made by calling someone a coward, and due to its severity old Scandinavian laws demanded retribution for this accusation if it had turned out unjustified. The Icelandic Gray Goose Laws referred to three words that were regarded as equal to argr by themselves. Those were ragr, strodinn, and sordinn, all three meaning the passive role of a man included in same-sex activities among males. Another semantic belonging to argr, ragr and ergi was, from the Gray Goose, "being a sorcerer's friend."