ABSTRACT
The Old Modern Danish (1500-1700) verb fortvivle is a loan word from the Middle Low German vortwivelen. Fortvivle corresponds to the modern German verzweifeln.1 The Danish lexical meaning is: a condition of deep psychic distress characterized by despondency, hopelessness and grief. It has a secondary meaning of desperation.2 It is worth noting that the Danish word contains the word for “doubt,” namely Tvivl, which comes from the Germanic twi-fla, meaning double.3 One meaning of the Danish prefix for is that the action of the verb to which it is appended is intensified to a ruinous extreme.4 In this case, fortvivle would be a ruinous doubting, or doublemindedness.
