A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF OLD ICELANDIC G. Zoega T. i::i: f'^' 55/-n U K IK wxslY) J ^i-^J/^ %. NYPUBLICLIBRARY THEBRANCHLIBRARIES 3 3333 06002 6537 yOEK PUBLIC LIBUAB-t THE IIBW MID-MANHATTAN LILH.!^^^^^^^^ f A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF OLD ICELANDIC Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/concisedictionar001857 A CONCISE DICTIONARY OF OLD ICELANDIC BY GEIR ZOEGA T. FIRST MASTER IN THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL OF REVKJAvfK AUTHOR OF AN ENGLISH-ICELANDIC AND ICELANDIC-ENGLISH DICTIONARY OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. i GLASGOW NEWYORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON CAPETOWN SALISBURY IBADAN NAIROBI LUSAKA ADDISABABA BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA KUALALUMPUR HONGKONG TOKYO FIRST EDITION IQIO REPRINTED I926, I942, I952, I961, I965, I967 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN ^ . M' ,W"> PREFACE While it cannot be said that the study of Icelandic has been neglected in Britain, there can beno doubt that it might withadvantage become much more general than it has been. There are several good reasons why it should be so. The Scandinavian influence was the earliest, and one of the strongest, of those outward forces which have gone to the making of modern English, and for the proper investigation and appreciation of this a knowledge of Icelandic is of the first impor- tance. Not only does it supply a linguistic basis for such a study; itis also the source of much of the information necessary for the under- standing ofthat period of British history. In itself, too, Old Icelandic literature, both in poetry and prose, presents a wealth of interesting material, which in some respects stands unrivalled among the literatures of mediaeval Europe, and without which our knowledge of the ancient North would be the merest shadow of what it is. This important language and literature first became easily accessible to the English student with thepublication(in 1869-74)ofthe Icelandic Dictionary begun by Richard Cleasby,and completed for the Clarendon Press by Gudbrand Vigfusson. This still remains the fullest record of Icelandic as a whole, although some portions of the older vocabulary have been more fully dealt with in later works. For beginners, how- ever, and for those whose interests chiefly centre in the old Icelandic prose-writings, some moreconvenientandcheaperwork has been greatly needed, andthe present volume is intended to supply thiswant. In the main it is founded on theOxford Dictionary, and has been compiled on the general principle of including all those words which the ordinary student of Icelandic is likely to meet with in the course ofhis reading. With the exceptionofthe Edda poems, the purelypoeticvocabulary has PREFACE vi lor the most part been omitted, as well as a number of compounds occurring only in legal, theological, or technical works. The line has not been very strictly drawn, however, and in doubtful cases insertion has been preferred to omission, especially where space readily admitted ofthis course. In the English renderings of the Icelandic words it has usually been possible to follow the larger work, but changes have been freely made whereverthey seemedtobe required. To make the precise meaning of the word still more evident, a short phrase or sentence has frequently been inserted after the English equivalent, and the student will find the usefulness of these illustrations increase as his knowledge of the language improves. The more difficult examples have been translated, entirely or in part, especially those illustrating the idiomatic uses of common verbs, which even in a concise dictionary must be treated with considerable fullness. The arrangement of the larger dictionary has on the whole been followed,butafew changes have beenintroduced. The mostimportant ofthese are the insertion of genitive compounds in their alphabetical places instead of under the simple word (e.g. alda-^ aldar- on p. 7 instead of under old on p. 528), and the separation of de from ot. Although these vowels were confused in Icelandic from an early date, and editions of old texts printed in Iceland usually employ as only, the distinction has much value for etymology and for the study of the other Scandinavian tongues. The vowel e has also been distinguished from (for which many editions use the more original g\ but without separation of the words containing them. In the reflexive forms of verbs the later -st has been used instead of the early -sk; the student must note, however, that in many editions the intermediate -z is employed. For purely philological purposes a different procedure would in somepointshavebeenadvisable, butthe dictionaryisintended in the first place to assist in reading the Icelandic sagas as they appear in the most accessible editions. For the convenience of beginners the tables ofdeclensions and con- jugations, and the lists of irregular forms, are reprinted (with some