Stylistic Stratification of the Old English Vocabulary

Table 3

Extant OE texts fall into a number of genres: poetic, religious, legal, and more or less neutral. From comparing their vocabularies it has been discov­ered that apart from a natural distribution of words determined by the contents of the texts, there existed a certain stylistic stratification of the OE vocabulary. Mo­dern philologists subdivide OE words into three stylistically distinct groups: neut­ral words, learned words and poetic words.

Neutral words were characterised by the highest frequency of occurrence, wide use in word-formation and historical stability; the majority of these words ─ often in altered shape —have been preserved to the present day. Numerous exam­ples of these words were given above ─ to illustrate phonetic changes, grammar rules and word formation (OE mann, stān, blind, drincan, bēon, etc.) Most words of this group are of native origin (see, however, early borrowings from Latin).

Learned words are found in texts of religious, legal, philosophical or scientific character. Among learned words there were many borrowings from Latin. Numerous compound nouns were built on Latin models as translation loans to render the exact meaning of foreign terms, e. g.:

wrē endlīc (L Accusativus), feor bold ‘body’ (L anim e domus 'dwelling of the soul') —see later Latin borrowings in OE. In later periods of history many OE learned words went out of use being replaced by new borrowings and native formations.

Poetic words in OE are of special interest: OE poetry employs a very specific vocabulary. A cardinal characteristic of OE poetry is its wealth of syno­nyms. In BEOWULF, for instance, there are thirty-seven words for the concept "warrior", twelve for "battle", seventeen for "sea". Among the poetic names for "hero" are beorn, rinc, sec, pe n and many metaphoric circumlocutions ("kennings") – compounds used instead of simple words: ār-berend lit. "spear-carrier", ar-wi a 'spear-warrior', sweord-freca 'sword-hero', hyrn-wi a 'corslet-warrior', ūp- ewinn 'war contest', lind-h ebbende 'having a shield', ūp-rinc 'man of war, warrior', pēod- uma 'man of the troop', ūp-wine 'war-friend'. Similarly, brēost-hord 'treas­ure of the breast' denoted ‘heart’ or ‘thought’; ūp-wudu ‘battle-wood’ stood for spear; bān-cofa 'chamber for bones', fl esc-hord 'hoard of flesh' and fl esc-hama 'cov­ering for flesh' ─ all meant 'body'; hord-cofa 'treasure-chamber' was a metaphor­ic circumlocution for "secret thoughts". These compounds were used as stylistic devices—for ornament, for expressive effect, to bring out and emphasize a cer­tain quality, and for the sake of alliteration.

Probably many poetic words were already archaic in late OE; some of the ken­nings were trite, conventional metaphors, while others were used only once in a certain text and therefore cannot be included in the basic OE vocabulary. And yet they constitute a unique feature of OE poetry and the OE language. Together with the decline of the genre OE poetic words went out of use.

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