Lately, I've been thinking about kennings

[conuly]

A kenning, to put this very simply, is a poetic substitution for a common word. They're quite popular in Norse poetry - instead of saying "gold" you might say "Sif's hair" (which was replaced with a magical wig of gold), instead of saying "sun" you might say "sky's jewel".

If you look at it right, kennings exist in Modern English as well - we refer to Superman as "the Man of Steel", and small children as "rugrats", and there's a whole host of highly offensive slurs that fit the bill as well. (If you don't look at it right, they don't exist in Modern English really, because we don't do much with them. But I like to think they do, so... yeah.)

I have spent a considerable amount of time amusing myself by writing out lists of kennings in Modern English (four eyes, skyscraper, Caped Crusader, pencil pusher...), but I will refrain from inflicting the entire list on you all. These lists are much more interesting to compose than to read anyway. Also, I'm hoping that if I don't pretend to be comprehensive, somebody will suggest a term that I've completely overlooked.

Comments

[miss_s_b]

"orange-faced s**tgibbon" for the POTUS is one I hear a lot recently...

[conuly]

That'd be a slur. Kennings are particularly common in that category, though unlike slurs against individuals, most of them are the awful sort that you're not supposed to repeat in polite company.

[miss_s_b]

the awful sort that you're not supposed to repeat in polite company

Hence the asterisks (I'm not usually an asterisking kind of person).

So Kennings are less specific then?

[conuly]

No, they're not. I mean, there's a zillion for "Odin" alone. Not in English, though. I meant that the slurs I was thinking of were mostly racist or sexist or homophobic epithets. I'm interested in them on a listing level, but I don't care to repeat them in a public forum because I don't want people thinking I say things like that :)

(I don't mind people thinking I say "shit", or insult Donald Trump.)

[miss_s_b]

Ah, OK, fairy nuff :)

[conuly]

(Sorry so pedantic there. It's, like, 4am here and I am still awake, so... yeah.)

[miss_s_b]

No no, pedantry is GOOD. I LIKE pedantry :)

[cosmolinguist]

Old English used them a lot too, especially in poetry. It didn't use rhyme like ours does, it relied more on alliteration in poetic language. And there were complicated rules about which words (or parts of a compound) in a line would match the sounds of which other words. And I think this is evident in some of your modern suggestions, like skyscraper and Caped Crusader.

[conuly]

And there were complicated rules about which words (or parts of a compound) in a line would match the sounds of which other words.

Tell us more!

[cosmolinguist]

The best thing I know about for this is actually an episode of a podcast, this one from The History of English podcast.

Basically from about 33 minutes in, he talks about how alliteration featured in Old English poetry (using a modern English example at first to illustrate this): the lines of poetry were split into two halves, and the first stressed sound in the second half of the line had to appear somewhere in the first half-line. And this was part of the reason for the cleverness of kennings, because sometimes you needed a description of something that started with a particular sound.

By 40:30, he uses the first three lines of Beowulf as an example of this on Old English. The rules show us that "geardagum" at the end of the first line was pronounced with its original g-sound and not the y-sound it ended up with ("gear" here means "year", so obviously we still have that y-sound there), because it has to alliterate with "Gar-Dena" (Spear-Danes) in the first half. The alliteration is more obvious in the second line, where "þeodcyninga" alliterates with "þrym" and its obvious those start with the same letter.

Because Old English didn't have as many words, poets sometimes had to make up new words if they needed a word to alliterate with something particular. So they called ships sea-goer or water-wood, and the sea itself seal-bath or fish-home. Some of these entered everyday language after being coined in the poetry.

[conuly]

Because Old English didn't have as many words

Your entire comment is fascinating and informative, and I'm not possibly able to give it the response it deserves, so I'm going to focus on this one thing pulled out of context and ask if you can cite that. I'm generally under the impression that trying to tally up words in a language is a fool's errand at best, and not the sort of thing serious students of linguistics should be engaged in... especially if that count is being made solely by looking at the written corpus of a large unlettered society, which perforce is how we have to do it with Old English. But I don't really know all that much about Old English - one of the perils of having ranging interests is I never become quite an expert in anything.

[cosmolinguist]

I don't know a lot myself, I studied it for the last year or so of a failed college career. I really like it and read or listen to the odd thing about it now, but I am not a linguist or any kind of expert.

That said, yes the number of words in a language doesn't tell you much that's really useful or important about it as a whole. But it's certainly true that Old English is going to have a much smaller vocabulary than modern English. Internet searches give 50,000-60,000 words as an estimate for Old English, (though I'm not clear how that number is arrived at, it's certainly more than "the words we still have recorded as being written in OE"), whereas of course there are over a million in modern English.

Of course a lot of those words are borrowed from other languages and while there were borrowings especially from Old Norse and Latin during the time Old English was spoken, it hadn't had the time and opportunity to acquire the vast numbers of new terms that it has since done. Even in the shift from Old English to the beginnings of Middle English, there's a huge jump in vocabulary because of all those French words suddenly being incorporated. And since then it's gone on to be a language of people who like interfering with and trying to assimilate speakers of many other languages, so it was inevitably going to have a much greater vocabulary than it had had previously.

[conuly]

That said, yes the number of words in a language doesn't tell you much that's really useful or important about it as a whole. But it's certainly true that Old English is going to have a much smaller vocabulary than modern English. Internet searches give 50,000-60,000 words as an estimate for Old English, (though I'm not clear how that number is arrived at, it's certainly more than "the words we still have recorded as being written in OE"), whereas of course there are over a million in modern English.

If you count extremely technical vocabulary of the sort that pretty much nobody actually has, and obsolete terms that pretty much nobody uses, and regionalisms that are really extremely regional, then you might get that number.

But at that point, you'll have to re-evaluate your wordcount of Old English as well.

No, I'm going to have to agree with mainstream linguists here: it is impossible to count up all the words in a language, and folly to try.

[conuly]

Some of these entered everyday language after being coined in the poetry.

This makes a charming picture of how people spoke, btw. And I bet after a while, they didn't even think they were saying anything novel!

(Sorry, don't want to edit previous comment.)

[cosmolinguist]

Nothing to he sorry about. :)

These are good points! It was largely an oral culture and poems would've been a much more popular social hobby than they are now, so a good word or phrase would probably get picked up and incorporated into everyday conversation the a similar way to how lines from TV/movies/song lyrics/internet memes do now. It's pretty cool to think about.

[lunadelcorvo]

Love this! I actually was thinking something similar when I last read Beowulf with a class. You HAVE to post the list!!!! Us language nerds need to give each other things to squee over! LOL

[conuly]

I can post a list, but it really will be small and incomplete and somebody is bound to pop up and go "That doesn't count" and I'll get snippy.

LOL, I probably *will* post a list soon anyway, I just am feeling random anxiety over it.

[lunadelcorvo]

LOL I get that... :)

[rivendellrose]

I have nothing to add at the moment except that I love kennings, and I love the idea of them still being in some form of use. ♥

[conuly]

You just have to define your terms very carefully!

[stardreamer]

But we don't know what you've overlooked until we see what you've got! Then we can look down the list and say, "Oh, you're missing [X] which is a kenning for [Y]."

[conuly]

I suppose there's something to that argument.

[cherrypixel]

Over the shoulder boulder holder?

[conuly]

LOL, that's got to count.

[sovay]

Also, I'm hoping that if I don't pretend to be comprehensive, somebody will suggest a term that I've completely overlooked.

But if you list what you've got already, people won't accidentally share duplicate information and will have a much better idea of which directions need to be filled in. Besides, I'd like to read it.

[silveradept]

So would something like a tiny tot be a kenning?

[conuly]

As I understand, it's supposed to be completely figurative, not using the word for what we're referring to - a tiny tot is just a tot that's tiny. But if we call them rug rats or ankle biters, that's different.

I admit, though, that it's possible I misunderstand the idea.

[silveradept]

Ah, that's a useful difference, thank you.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I'd definitely be interested in the incomprehensive list, because I'm not a native speaker and it would be immense fun to see how many modern kennings I'm familiar with. :D

Would you count things like "plumber's cleavage" as well?

The ones you mentioned in your post show that Modern English still does quite a bit with them, even if we don't produce alliterative poetry...

[conuly]

Usually we'd say "plumber's butt". And I, personally, wouldn't count it because we're talking about butts, and there's a butt right in the phrase. But "muffin top" might count.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Maybe "plumber's cleavage" is a UK thing, then. I agree that "plumber's butt" wouldn't count. I'm not familiar with the phrase "muffin top", so I can't say anything about that!

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

A 'muffin top' is the part of one's belly that bulges out over the top of one's jeans, like a muffin-top bulges up over the edge of a muffin-tin. Also called a 'jelly roll'.

[conuly]

Never heard jelly roll before.

[conuly]

Muffin top is not a phrase I've actually used, but you do hear it pop up now and again, just as elenbarathi described.