etymology - Is "giddy" derived from "Gid" which was Middle English for "God"?


Recently I posted an answer about the etymology of goodbye, in that answer I included a reference that cited Gid be with you, which was dated 1400-1499. The phrase was mentioned in Diachronic Pragmatics: Seven case studies in English illocutionary development, and written by Dr. Leslie K. Arnovick


Below I include a cropped screenshot showing the citation in table 6.1, on page 99.


enter image description here


Sceptical, and fascinated, I wanted to find out more. But try as I did, I could not find any online references that confirmed Gid (meaning God) was Middle English.



  1. Etymonline says



Old English god "supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person," from Proto-Germanic *guthan (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch god, Old High German got, German Gott, Old Norse guð, Gothic guþ), from PIE *ghut- "that which is invoked" (source also of Old Church Slavonic zovo "to call," Sanskrit huta- "invoked," an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- "to call, invoke."





  1. Wikipedia's page for God (word) basically repeats Etymonline but in greater detail.




  2. Wiktionary informs that gid can refer to a sheep disease; an obsolete term for a fiddle; or Scots for good. For scrupulousness, I also checked the wiktionary entries for: Dutch gód, Swedish göd, Icelandic goð and Old High German got




  3. Wiktionary also directed me to guid, which is cited in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; however, it is an archaic spelling variant of good.




  4. Merriam-Webster states that the sheep disease called gid is a back-formation of giddy, and dates it from 1601.




  5. Under the etymology of giddy, M-W says





Middle English gidy mad, foolish, from Old English gydig possessed, mad; akin to Old English god god.




Questions



  1. Is Gid Middle English for God? Or is “Gid be with you” a misprint?

  2. Did giddy originally mean to be possessed by God?




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