Kennings are compound words that have metaphorical meanings, such as whale-road meaning “sea.” They’re often found in Anglo-Saxon poetry, such as The Seafarer and Beowulf, but there are modern ones as well, such as rugrats for “small children.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Modern and Historic Kennings”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette. One of the loveliest aspects of old Anglo-Saxon poetry is the use of what we call kennings. That’s K-E-N-N-I-N-G-S, kennings. And Grant, as you know, these are combinations of words that are usually two nouns, and they’re put together to form a word that has a new meaning. And it’s usually poetic. It’s like watching a metaphor being born.
There are a lot of wonderful ones in Old English poetry. You also see it in Old Norse poetry. For example, in the Old English poem, The Seafarer, the poet uses all these different kennings for the ocean. Like instead of the sea, the poet writes about the swan road or the whale way. Or a ship is a seagenga, a seawalker.
Ooh, a seawalker.
Yeah.
A seagenga.
Yeah, isn’t that nice? And I always enjoy coming across these because you have this moment of recognition, you know, when you’re trying to figure out what it means. And all of a sudden it clicks into place. And you realize that when the poet is talking about a sky candle, hail from candle, what they’re talking about is the sun.
The sun.
Right.
So it’s purely for poetic purposes? This isn’t the way that they spoke on a day-to-day basis?
Well, I think we speak that way on a daily basis. It seems so ordinary that we just don’t remember anymore.
Right.
Right. I mean, think about a term like rugrats, you know? I mean, they’re not really rugrats. You have to take those two words and put them together in your head and realize that you’re talking in a joking way about children. These are amazing compounds.
I see that Wikipedia has a pretty decent list.
Yeah, yeah, they do. And so kennings, K-E-N-N-I-N-G-S. Now, is there any language that still does this as far as you know?
That’s a great… I wonder if the Icelandic… I was going to say, I would bet Icelandic, but I’m not sure.
Well, these are beautiful, Martha. Do you have other examples?
One of my favorites is Word Hoard.
Word Hoard.
Yeah.
A book.
Dictionary.
Well, in Beowulf, they talk about Beowulf unlocking his word hoard. Bringing forth his speech with a passion. Speaking your heart, the words that you’ve hoarded.
I’m looking at a list here of kennings. I googled this real fast.
Yeah.
And for sword, the kenning is wound hoe, H-O-E.
Yeah.
Like the implement that you would use in the garden.
Yeah.
Wound hoe.
Yeah, there’s some pretty gory ones. Yeah, I think there’s one for Battlefield that’s something like Gore Cradle or something.
Gore Cradle.
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