The Resources of the Old English Vocabulary

To one unfamiliar with Old English it might seem that a language which lacked the large number of words borrowed from Latin and French that now form so important a part of our vocabulary would be somewhat limited in resources. One might think that OE, while possessing adequate means of expression for the affairs of simple everyday life, would be unable to make the fine distinctions that a literary language is called upon to express. In other words, an Anglo-Saxon might seem like someone today who is learning to speak a foreign language and who can manage in a limited way to convey the meaning without having a sufficient command of the vocabulary to express those subtler shades of thought and feeling, the nuances of meaning, that one is able to suggest in one’s native language. This, however, is not so. When our means are limited we often develop unusual resourcefulness in utilizing those means to the full. Such resourcefulness is characteristic of OE. The language in this stage shows a great flexibility, a capacity for bending old words to new uses. By means of prefixes and suffixes a single root is made to yield a variety of derivations, and the range of these is greatly extended by the ease with which compounds are formed. The method can be made clear by an illustration. The word mōd, which is our word mood (a mental state), meant in OE ‘heart’, ‘mind’, ‘spirit’, and hence ‘boldness’ or ‘courage’, sometimes ‘pride’ or ‘haughtiness’. From it, by the addition of a common adjective ending, was formed the adjective mōdig with a similar range of meanings (spirited, bold, high-minded, arrogant, stiff-necked), and by means of further endings the adjective mōdiglic ‘magnanimous’, the adverb mōdiglīce ‘boldly’, ‘proudly’, and the noun mōdignes ‘magnanimity’, ‘pride’. Another ending converted mōdig into a verb mōdigian, meaning ‘to bear oneself proudly or exultantly’, or sometimes ‘to be indignant’, ‘to rage’. Other forms conveyed meanings whose relation to the root is easily perceived: gemōdod ‘disposed’, ‘minded’, mōdfull ‘haughty’, mōdlēas ‘spiritless’. By combining the root with other words meaning ‘mind’ or ‘thought’ the idea of the word is intensified, and we get mōdsefa, mōdgeþanc, mōdgeþoht, mōdgehygd, mōdgemynd, mōdhord (hord = treasure), all meaning ‘mind’, ‘thought’, ‘undrestanding’.