læccan

From Proto-West Germanic *lakkjan (“to seize”), from Proto-Germanic *lakjaną (“to grasp, seize”), evidently only attested in Old English, from Proto-Indo-European *lh₂g-ie-, which could be an isogloss shared with Ancient Greek λάζομαι (lázomai, “I seize, grasp”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈlæt.t͡ʃɑn/

læċċan

1. to grab (sometimes violently: snatch, catch, apprehend)
   • The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

     Ōsrēd, þe wæs Norþanhymbra cining, æfter wræcsīþe hām cumenum ġelǣht wæs ⁊ ofslagen on XVIII Kƚ Octoƀ ⁊ his līc liġþ æt Tīnamūþe. ⁊ Æþelrēd cining feng tō nīwan wīfe, sēo wæs Ælflēd ġehāten, on III Kƚ Octobr̃.

     Osred, who was king of Northumbria, was apprehended and slain on the 17th of October after coming home from his foreign travels, and his body lies at Tynemouth. And King Aethelred took a new wife, whose name was Aelfled, on the third of October.

• ġelæċċan

• Middle English: lacchen
  • English: latch

• Joseph Bosworth, T. Northcote Toller (1898) “læccan”, in An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.