Old English
Pre-Norman Germanic language
Old English is the earliest form of the English language, spoken and written in England from roughly 450 to 1100 CE.
It looks almost like a foreign language to modern readers, with unfamiliar vocabulary and complex grammatical inflections that English has since shed.
Works like *Beowulf* were composed in Old English.
The term also describes a style of ornate blackletter typeface that evokes medieval manuscripts and appears on diploma headers, newspaper mastheads, and tattoos.
Old English epic's protagonist
- kenningFigurative Norse compound
- runesOld Germanic script
- Lindisfarne GospelsDecorated early medieval evangeliary
- NorthumbrianOf northeast England
Germanic · inflection · declension · diphthongs · pronunciation · etymology · vocabulary · lexicon
Old English epic's protagonist
- WandererNamed itinerant figure
- JudithHebrew heroine, biblical
- elegiesPoems lamenting death
- riddlesPuzzling questions or teasers
maxims · alliteration · caesura · kenning · mead hall · Grendel · comitatus · epic
Germanic peoples in medieval England
- AnglesEarly medieval British settlers
- SaxonsGermanic British settlers
- JutesFifth-century British invaders
- HeptarchySeven-kingdom era in England
Wessex · Mercia · Northumbria · Kent · Alfred the Great · Vikings · Norman Conquest · Christianization
Rebuilding after destruction
- comparativeInvolving measured contrast
- corpusAssembled written works
- dialectsRegional language variations
- etymologyWord origin study
Proto-Germanic · Grimm's Law · loanwords · Latin influence · cognates · attestation · philology · word formation
Decorated early medieval evangeliary
- parchmentTreated hide for manuscripts
- vellumPrepared calfskin for writing
- scriptoriumMonastery manuscript workshop
- illuminationProvision of light
marginalia · codex · glosses · insular script · bound · quill · ink · preservation
Beowulf
Old English epic's protagonist
- kenningFigurative Norse compound
- runesOld Germanic script
- Lindisfarne GospelsDecorated early medieval evangeliary
Northumbrian · Germanic · inflection · declension · diphthongs · pronunciation · etymology · vocabulary · lexicon · grammar
Beowulf
Old English epic's protagonist
riddles · maxims · alliteration · caesura · kenning · mead hall · Grendel · comitatus · epic · lament
Anglo-Saxons
Germanic peoples in medieval England
- AnglesEarly medieval British settlers
- SaxonsGermanic British settlers
- JutesFifth-century British invaders
Heptarchy · Wessex · Mercia · Northumbria · Kent · Alfred the Great · Vikings · Norman Conquest · Christianization · monasteries
reconstruction
Rebuilding after destruction
- comparativeInvolving measured contrast
- corpusAssembled written works
- dialectsRegional language variations
etymology · Proto-Germanic · Grimm's Law · loanwords · Latin influence · cognates · attestation · philology · word formation · compounds
Lindisfarne Gospels
Decorated early medieval evangeliary
- parchmentTreated hide for manuscripts
- vellumPrepared calfskin for writing
- scriptoriumMonastery manuscript workshop
illumination · marginalia · codex · glosses · insular script · bound · quill · ink · preservation · transcription
- blackletterrotunda, Gothic script, Gutenberg Bible
- Germanic dialectsWestphalian, Northumbrian
- languagesArabic, Chinese, German, French, Japanese
- British LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Austen
- English languagelinguistics, semantics, phonetics, orthography, vocabulary
- English LiteratureShakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, Bronte, Chaucer
old, English, England, Anglicism, Anglophone, Englishman, Englishwoman, Englishmen, Englishwomen