ONlwSG

stòrag 

The form stoireag, with a palatalised medial consonant and without a lengthmark is also recorded, but lengthmarks are omitted consistently by the contributor concerned (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: Sutherland).

f. [ˈs̪t̪ɔːɾaɡ̊], 

Cf. [st̪ɔ:ɾɑɡ] (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: Sutherland), /sdɔːrag/ (AFB^˄); see also fn 1.

gen. stòraige -[æɡ̊ʲə], -[ɛɡ̊ʲə], ‘a small stack of drying peats’ is a North and West Sutherland word 

Gunn and Mackay list stòrag merely as part of ‘the nomenclature of peat-cutting’ used in Sutherland, while Henderson defines the word as ‘five or six rùghan of peat, in all about 36, heaped together’. The terms stòrag and rùghan, q.v., both apply to small stacks of drying peats, although their relative sizes vary locally: for stòrag, cf. Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄: ‘a small heap of drying peats’ (Bettyhill; Skerray), ‘a small stack of peats built at first lifting’ (Portskerra), ‘the first lifting of peats [cf. stòradh, below] (4–5 peats)’ (Kinlochbervie; Blairmore) and, s.v. stoireag (fn 1, above), ‘a small heap of five or six peats lifted up on end, when the upper side of the peat becomes fairly dry and firm’; Grannd 2013, s.v. peat: ‘a stack of three or four peats standing on end with one laid on top’ (North-West Sutherland); AFB^˄: ‘a small stack; small peat stack (usually 4–5 placed like a house of cards)’; and Nic a’ Ghobhainn (2023^˄): ‘a stack of six peat bricks’ (Durness).

derived by Gunn and Mackay (1897, 180) from ‘Norse’, and by Henderson (1910, 119: stōrag) specifically from ON stór-, stem form of the adjective stórr m. ‘big, great’; McDonald (2009, 417) considers the derivation likely.

While ON stòr- would indeed be expected to yield SG [s̪t̪ɔːɾ], and while there is the parallel of the Old Norse adjective bratt- (brattr) ‘steep’ apparently yielding SG bratag ‘steep place’ (via SG *brat, q.v., + -ag as a suffix of place), it is perhaps more plausible that SG stòrag goes back to SG stòr m. [s̪t̪ɔːɾ], attested in the sense ‘broken or decayed tooth’ (HSS 1828 

MacLennan (1925) gives ‘crowded teeth’. SG stòr in the senses ‘steep, high cliff like an obelisk’ (HSS 1828) and ‘steep, high peak (Skye)’ (M^cAlpine 1832, so also MacLennan 1925) seems to refer directly to the rock-stack An Stòr (see below).

) and probably from ON staur (accusative of staurr m.) ‘a stake, pole’; 

Cf. ON skaut nt. > SG sgòd, q.v.; ON baunir pl. ⇒ SG pònair, q.v. ON staurr also gives Scots stour /stʌur/ ‘stake, post, pole’ (CDS2), which in turn might yield SG stòr, cf. Scots gowk [gʌuk] etc. ⇒ SG gòcaireachd, q.v.; Scots rowt [rʌut] etc. > SG ròd, s.v. rotach.

cf. the derivative adjective stòrach ‘having broken teeth’ (HSS 1828), ‘sharp, pointed’ (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄, s.v. stòrach: Scalpay, but s.v. storach [sic]: ‘jagged (sky-line, teeth, etc.)’, Strathglass), and the open compound fiacail-stòrach ‘a prominent tooth overlapping the others’ (MacDonald 1946, 44), ‘buck-tooth; a small tooth growing alongside or on top of another one’ (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄, s.v.: Lewis, and s.v. stòrach: Scalpay) – indeed, Am Fiacail Stòrach ‘the buck-tooth’ (Forbes 1923, 412: Fiacail Storach [sic]; Drummond 1992, 89: Am Fiacaill Stòrach) is an alias for An Stòr (see below).

Derivatives: SG athstorag [ɑst̪ɔɾɑɡ] (Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄) 

With the prefix ath- ‘re-’, with forward stress and shortening of the original stressed vowel of stòrag, although note that AFB^˄ gives ath-stòrag /a sdɔːrag/.

refers to ‘a number of stòrags heaped together’; 

≈Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄, s.v. ath-storag: ‘a larger collection of peats than the stòrag, usually incorporating a few stòragan’, Portskerra, s.v. ath stoireag: ‘a larger heap – the size of which is according to weather condition’; Grannd 2013, s.v. peat: ath-storag ‘a stack three to four feet wide’; AFB^˄, s.v. ath-stòrag ‘a group of small peat stacks (2–3 stòragan stacked together, done in wet summers)’; Nic a’ Ghobhainn 2023^˄: astrag [sic] ‘a stack of 18 peat bricks’, Durness.

and the verbal nouns stòradh and athstoradh refer to the building of stòrags and athstorags, respectively; cf. the terms athrughan, and rùghadh and athrughadh, s.v. rùghan.

Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄, s.v. stòradh: ‘lifting peats to dry, first lifting made into stòragan’, Portskerra, s.v. ath-storadh: ‘making larger heaps of peats than when at first lifting’, Portskerra; AFB^˄, s.v. ath-stòradh: ‘the (act of) re-stacking peats into stòragan (to allow the other side to dry)’.

SG An Stòr
(1) In Skye: The inland rock-stack called Bodach an Stòir (Eng. The Old Man of Storr) 

Forbes 1923, 412: Bodach a Stoir ‘the old man’ [sic].

NN500539 stands on the eastern shoulder of An Stòr (Eng. The Storr) NN495540, a mountain in the north of Skye. MacBain (1922, 38: [Eng.] Ben Storr) and Drummond (1992, 89: [Eng.] Storr) derive Stòr from ON stór(r) ‘big’, while Taylor (2011, 194, s.v. The Storr) has SG ‘An Stòrr. “The great one”, from Norse’. However, it seems probable that SG Stòr (now An Stòr, with the article) derives from ON *Staur accusative of *Staurr m. ‘[the] stake’, and it is likely that in the first instance the Gaelic name denoted the rock-stack itself before (a) transference of the name Stòr to the mountain and (b) renaming of the rock-stack to Bod Stòir ‘the penis of Stòr’, later sanitised as Bodach Stòir ‘the old man of Stòr’, now Bodach an Stòir (with the article), perhaps under the influence of the English form The Old Man of Storr: cf. Dwelly, s.n. Storr: ‘Bod Stòrr (euphemistically Bodach Stòrr)’.

It may be, however, that SG An Stòr and Bodach an Stòir were earlier (An) Stòrr and Bodach (an) Stòrr, 

So Cox 2010b, 71 + fn 24. Formally, the genitive singular of SG Stòrr would be Stòirr, although this falls together in sound with Stòrr through assimilation of palatalised with non-palatalised unlenited rr, hence genitive singular forms in Stòrr. Of course, it is possible that, as an Old Norse loan-name, SG Stòrr resisted inflection in the genitive case (for an analysis of the instance of genitive inflection in Old Norse loan-names in Lewis, see Cox 2022, 95–98).

respectively. For Stòrr, cf. Nicolson 1875a, 168: [SG] an Stòrr; Robertson c. 1904–05 (in King 2019, 196): ‘[Eng.] The Stòrr [sic] “[SG] an Stòrr”; Dwelly ibid.: [SG] Bod Stòrr [source: W. J. Watson] (euphemistically Bodach Stòrr); and Marwick ≈1923, 261: ‘Professor Watson informs me that the Old Man of Storr in Skye is a mere euphemism; the real name is Bod Storr “the phallus of Storr” ’. For Stòr, cf. OS 1843–82 (Inverness-shire, Isle of Skye, Sheet XVIII, surveyed 1875, published 1878): [Eng.] The Storr; the Ordnance Survey Name Book for Inverness (OS1/16/5/97): ‘Lealt River “This river has its source a short distance to the north of the hill known as Storr” ’, with Storr altered to [SG] an Stor in red; MacGill-Eain (‘Uamha ’n Òir’, 1972 or thereafter): [SG] an Stòr; and Faclan bhon t-Sluagh^˄, s.v. bioda: ‘Mr MacDonald [of Skye] supports that this is euphemism for bod. Bioda an Stòir is known as Bod an Stòir. Bioda an Stòir, Old Man of Starr, Skye’ [sic, but italics added]. Forbes (1923, 412) gives [?SG] Storr, Stor. An earlier SG Stòrr would go back to an ON *Staurr nom., and a development to Stòr might be due to the influence of An Stòr in Assynt (see below) and/or SG stòr in the sense ‘broken or decayed tooth’ (see above) or in its more recent sense ‘store’ (< Eng. store).

(2) In Assynt: The coastal rock-stack called Bodach an Stòir (possibly a translation of Eng. The Old Man of Stoer or in imitation of Bodach an Stòir in Skye, but at any rate following the syntax of SG Rubha an Stòir (Eng. The Point of Stoer)) NC016352 stands to the west of the crofting township An Stòr (Eng. Stoer) in West Sutherland.

But An Stòir in Nicolson 1881, 387: Is fhada Duinéideann bho ’n fhear ’tha ’g éirigh ’s a’ Stòir ‘Edinburgh is far from the man who rises at Stoer’ [sic]. For the forms Bodach an Stòrr and Rubha an Stòrr (Am Baile^˄), cf. those under (1), above.

John Mackay (1890, 121) derives Stoer from either Gaelic or Old Norse; Gunn and Mackay’s (1897, 160) derivation of Stoer from SG stòr ‘a steep high cliff’ seems drawn from HSS 1828 (see fn 4, above); Johnston (1903, 274, s.v. Stoer) rightly dismisses a derivation from ON staðr m. ‘residence → farm’, instead suggesting ON stor ‘a steep place’ [sic]; while MacBain (1922, 17: Stoer) has ON stór- ‘big’ and Taylor (2011, 194, s.v. Stoer) SG ‘An Stòr. “Large”, from Norse’. SG An Stòr may well go back to an earlier SG Stòr, itself probably from ON *Staur acc. m. ‘(the) stake’, cf. ON fyrir Stauri ‘off [the] Staurr’ 

Which is taken to be Rubha an Stòir (The Point of Stoer) by Anderson (1922 II, 787) and Tjomsland (1951, 26), although other features may have borne such a Norse name.

in Hrafns saga (Vigfussen 1878 II, 290) (cf. Watson 1906, 367–68: SG Stòr, Eng. Stoer; Henderson 1910, 351: SG Stōr, Eng. Stoer; Cox 2010b, 71 + fn 24).

Summary
Independently of ON *Staur acc. (or *Staurr nom.) being borrowed into Gaelic as a place-name, ON staur acc. ‘stake, pole’ also appears to have been borrowed into Gaelic as an appellative, viz stòr. In Norway, ON staurr is found in mountain and promontory names (Rygh 1898, 79), and the semantic development from ‘stake’ → ‘stack’ appears to be paralleled in Gaelic, both in the application of the borrowed place-names (An Stòr) and in the meaning of the Gaelic derivative stòrag (‘peat stack’). SG stòr develops the derivative (nouns) stòrag, athstorag, (verbal nouns) stòradh, athstoradh and (adjective) stòrach. Of course, influence at some level from Scots stour ‘stake, post, pole’ (fn 5, above) cannot be ruled out.

Cf. starrag.