 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2007) |
Frith is a word derived from Old English meaning "peace; protection; safety, security, freedom, refuge". [1] [2]
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(August 2007) |
Frith is a word derived from Old English meaning "peace; protection; safety, security, freedom, refuge". [1] [2]
Derived from Old English friðu, friþ , it is cognate to Old Norse friðr , Old Saxon frithu , Old High German fridu , German Friede , Dutch vrede , West Frisian frede , Luxembourgish Fridden , Icelandic friður , Common Scandinavian fred (all with meanings similar to "peace" or "calm") and also root-cognate to friend .
In Swedish, two different words with different meanings have developed from this word, the words fred (state of no war) and frid (state of no disturbance) and also the expression that something is "fredat/fredad" more or less "peaced" denoting things that are not to be touched such as animals not to be hunted or flowers not to be picked. The English word became obsolete in the Middle English period, but survived into the 17th century in the compound frith-silver "feudal payment".
[ citation needed ]
In Anglo-Saxon and post-Anglo-Saxon culture, the term has a considerably broader scope and meaning. Frith has a great deal to do not only with the state of peace but also with the nature of social relationships conducive to peace. Moreover, it has strong associations with stability and security. The word friþgeard, meaning "asylum, sanctuary" was used for sacrosanct areas. A friþgeard would then be any enclosed area given over to the worship of the gods. Seating oneself on a frith-stool was sometimes a requirement for claiming sanctuary in certain English churches. Frith is also used in the context of fealty, as an expression of the relationship between a lord and his people. Frith is inextricably related to the state of kinship, which is perhaps the strongest indicator of frith. In this respect, the word can be coterminous with another significant Anglo-Saxon root-word, sib (from which the word 'sibling' is derived) - indeed the two are frequently interchanged. In this context, frith goes further than expressing blood ties, and encompasses all the concomitant benefits and duties which kinship engenders.[ citation needed ]Frith also has a legal significance: peace was effectively maintained in Anglo-Saxon times by the frith-guild, an early manifestation of summary justice. In the post-conquest poem Rime of King William , a deorfrið (literally animal-frith) referred to one of the royal forests set up by William the Conqueror, probably the New Forest. Stefan Jurasinski argued that frið here could have carried the legal notion of protection (Latin: pax). [3] [4]
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymological ancestor in a common parent language.
Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, was the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th century, and the first Old English literary works date from the mid-7th century. After the Norman Conquest of 1066, English was replaced for several centuries by Anglo-Norman as the language of the upper classes. This is regarded as marking the end of the Old English era, since during the subsequent period the English language was heavily influenced by Anglo-Norman, developing into what is now known as Middle English in England and Early Scots in Scotland.
A churl, in its earliest Old English (Anglo-Saxon) meaning, was simply "a man" or more particularly a "free man", but the word soon came to mean "a non-servile peasant", still spelled ċeorl(e), and denoting the lowest rank of freemen. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it later came to mean the opposite of nobility and royalty, "a common person". Says Chadwick:
we find that the distinction between thegn and ceorl is from the time of Aethelstan the broad line of demarcation between the classes of society.
Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".
A scop was a poet as represented in Old English poetry. The scop is the Old English counterpart of the Old Norse skald, with the important difference that "skald" was applied to historical persons, and scop is used, for the most part, to designate oral poets within Old English literature. Very little is known about scops, and their historical existence is questioned by some scholars.
Shalom is a Hebrew word meaning peace and can be used idiomatically to mean hello.
A wight is a being or thing. This general meaning is shared by cognate terms in Germanic languages, however the usage of the term varies greatly over time and between regions. In Old English, it could refer to anything in existence, with more specific usages arising in Middle English, perhaps due to the term of similar meaning in Anglo-Norman, creature. The term is widely used in modern fantasy, often to mean specifically a being which is undead.
Oisc, or, in a later spelling, Ēsc was, if he existed, an early king of Kent and, according to Bede, the eponymous founder of the tribe known as Oiscingas (early Old English.
Etymology is the study of the origin and evolution of words, including their constituent units of sound and of meaning, across time. In the 21st century a subfield within linguistics, etymology has become a more rigorously scientific study. Most directly tied to historical linguistics, philology, and semiotics, it additionally draws upon comparative semantics, morphology, pragmatics, and phonetics in order to attempt a comprehensive and chronological catalogue of all meanings and changes that a word carries throughout its history. The origin of any particular word is also known as its etymology.
There are many widely varying names of Germany in different languages, more so than for any other European nation. For example:
The English word god comes from the Old English god, which itself is derived from the Proto-Germanic *gudą. Its cognates in other Germanic languages include guþ, gudis, guð, god, and got.
Shin-Lamedh-Mem is a triconsonantal root of many Semitic words. The root meaning translates to "whole, safe, intact, unharmed, to go free, without blemish". Its earliest known form is in the name of Shalim, the ancient god of dusk of Ugarit. Derived from this are meanings of "to be safe, secure, at peace", hence "well-being, health" and passively "to be secured, pacified, submitted".
The term man and words derived from it can designate any or even all of the human race regardless of their sex or age. In traditional usage, man itself refers to the species or to humanity (mankind) as a whole.
Many words that existed in Old English did not survive into Modern English. There are also many words in Modern English that bear little or no resemblance in meaning to their Old English etymons. Some linguists estimate that as much as 80 percent of the lexicon of Old English was lost by the end of the Middle English period, including many compound words, e.g. bōchūs, yet the components 'book' and 'house' were kept. Certain categories of words seem to have been more susceptible. Nearly all words relating to sexual intercourse and sexual organs as well as "impolite" words for bodily functions were ignored in favor of words borrowed from Latin or Ancient Greek. The Old English synonyms are now mostly either extinct or considered crude or vulgar, such as arse/ass.
The spear or lance, together with the bow, the sword, the seax and the shield, was the main equipment of the Germanic warriors during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages.
Among ancient English writers, a frithstool, frith stool or fridstool signified a seat, chair, or place of peace, in reference to the Anglo-Saxon concept of frith.
"The Rime of King William" is an Old English poem that tells the death of William the Conqueror. The Rime was a part of the only entry for the year of 1087 in the "Peterborough Chronicle/Laud Manuscript." In this entry there is a thorough history and account of the life of King William. The entry in its entirety is regarded "as containing the best contemporary estimate of William's achievements and character as seen by a reasonably objective Englishman". As a resource, earlier writers drew from this in a more literal sense, while later historians referred to it more liberally. The text in its original language can be found in The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154, edited by Cecily Clark. A modern translation can be found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles translated by G.N. Garmonsway. Seth Lerer has published a more recent modern translation of "The Rime of King William" in his article, "Old English and Its Afterlife," in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature.
A bēot is Old English for a ritualized boast, vow, threat, or promise. The principle of a bēot is to proclaim one's acceptance of a seemingly impossible challenge in order to gain tremendous glory for actually accomplishing it.
The Christian holiday Easter has several names. The names differ depending on languages, but most are derived from Greek and Latin "pascha", which is taken from the Hebrew פֶּסַח (Pesach), meaning Passover. The modern English term Easter developed from the Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre, which itself developed prior to 899, originally referring to the name of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Ēostre.
Anglo-Saxon paganism and mythology | ||
|---|---|---|
| Gods and divine figures |  | |
| Heroic figures | ||
| Other beings | ||
| Locations | ||
| Sources | ||
| Origins | ||
| Society and culture | ||
| Neopagan revival | ||