A concise dictionary of old Icelandic

34.7 MB·English

by  1857-1928

A
CONCISE
DICTIONARY
OF OLD
ICELANDIC
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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
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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