The Anglo-Saxon Glossary

Acre
Old English: æcer
Denotes the amount of land a yoke/pair of oxen could plough in a day.

Atheling
Old English: ætheling
Anglo-Saxon title of nobility usually restricted to members of the royal family; a prince or nobleman, especially the heir to the throne. The term is a combination of æthel, meaning ‘noble family’, and -ing, which means ‘belonging to’. The word was often used to form part of the name of several Anglo-Saxon kings, such as Æthelbert, Æthelwulf, Æthelred, indicating their noble birth. It was also occasionally used after the Norman Conquest to designate members of the Norman royal family, for example, William Adelin, son and heir of King Henry I, was commonly called William Ætheling.

Bocland (Book-land)
Old English: bōcland
Land held by a written charter (a “book”). This was a prestigious form of land tenure usually granted by the king to nobles or the church, which could be freely inherited or sold.

Bretwalda
Old English: brytenwealda
Bretwalda is an Anglo-Saxon term referring to the chief king in Anglo-Saxon England; a ruler with overall superiority to other rulers. The word means “ruler of the Britons” or “Britain ruler”, and was used for several kings that held supremacy over kingdoms beyond their own. The word likely comes from the Old English words bryten, meaning ‘broad’ or ‘wide’, and -walda (or -wealda), meaning ‘ruler’ or ‘to rule’. Some notable Bretwaldas included Egbert of Wessex, Æthelberht of Kent, Raedwald of East Anglia, and Oswald of Northumbria.

Burh / Burg / Burgh
Old English: burˠx
Anglo-Saxon word for a fortified town or fortified settlement, meaning ‘fortified place’, ‘fortress’ or simply just ‘fort’. Burhs became popular during the reign of King Alfred the Great and his son and daughter, King Edward the Elder and Æthelfead, Lady of the Mercians, who created a network of burhs as defence against Viking raids and invasions, and this is where we get the word ‘borough’ from today. A modern place name that ends in either -burg, -burgh, -bury, -brough or -borough hints at a fortified Anglo-Saxon past.
Following the Norman Conquest, this root word combined with French law to create the term burgage, which referred to a specific type of town property rental – burgage plot.

Burh-geat (Borough-gate)
Old English: burhġeat
A fortified gatehouse belonging to a thegn’s manor. Having a burh-geat on your land was one of the strict legal requirements for a commoner to prosperously rise into the aristocratic rank of a Thegn.

Ceaster
Old English: ċester, ċæster, cæster
An Old English word with Latin roots that the Anglo-Saxons used to refer to a place that was once a Roman fort (sometimes the site of a pre-historic fort). The Anglo-Saxons renamed Roman settlements using this word, which comes from the Latin word Castrum, meaning a military camp or fort. A modern place name that ends in either -chester, -caster and -cester (old -ceaster), are indications that the place was the site of a Roman castrum.

Ceorl / Carl / Churl
Old English: ceorl
An Anglo-Saxon freeman of the lowest class, ranking below a thegn and the nobility, but above slaves; a man simply without rank, a ‘common person’ or ‘free peasant’ who formed the basis of society in Anglo-Saxon England.

Chipping
Old English: cēping, cēpan
The word chipping comes from the Old English word cēping, which means ‘market’ or ‘market-place’. It derived from the Anglo-Saxon and Old English root cēpan, meaning ‘to buy or trade’. The word appears as a prefix in historic market towns across England where regional commerce took place, such as Chipping Campden, Chipping Norton and Chipping Sodbury.

Christianity / Christendom
Old English: crīstendōm
Old English referring to the Christian world; Christian states, Christian-majority countries or countries in which Christianity is dominant. For example, the phrase “the greatest church in Christendom” would translate to “the greatest church in the Christian world”.

Danegeld
Old English: gafol
Translating to ‘Danish tax’ or ‘Dane yield’; Danegeld was a land tax levied in Anglo-Saxon England to pay tribute or protection money to the Danes / Viking raiders to save their lands from being ravaged, especially during the reign of King Æthelred the Unready. The word comes from Dene (Dane) and geld (tax). It was the post-conquest Norman administration who called the tax ‘Danegeld’ as the word is not recorded before the Norman Conquest. Prior to the Norman Conquest, the payments were at the time actually called ‘gafol’, meaning ‘gavel’ or ‘tribute’ in Old English.

Danelaw
Old English: Dena lagu
The Danelaw was the part of Anglo-Saxon England between the late 9th century and the Norman Conquest that was controlled by the Danes, and where Danish laws applied. The Danelaw originated from the invasion of England by the Great Heathen Army in 865. The result was the establishment of the ‘Danelaw’ by King Alfred the Great, after negotiating peace with the Danish leader Guthrum in the 870s. This allowed the Danes to settle and control a large area of land in exchange for their loyalty to the English crown. Old English Dena lagu comes from Dena (Dane) and lagu (law), and later evolved into Dene lawe in Middle English.

Ealdorman
Old English: æaldorman, ealdormann
A high-status Anglo-Saxon official appointed by the king as his representative, literally meaning ‘elder man’. In many cases they came from ancient and powerful families. An ealdorman was responsible for law, order, and justice in his shire and for leading his local fyrd in battle. Ealdormen were at the top of the class system, with thegns (landholders) below them. The title of ealdorman was gradually replaced by the title of jarl (earl) during the Danish occupation of England.

Folcland (Folk-land)
Old English: folcland
Land held by customary law and common right of the people (the folk), rather than by a royal written charter. It carried heavy obligations to provide food rents and labour to the king.

Fyrd
Old English: fyrd, fyrˠd
A type of early Anglo-Saxon army; a local army of an Anglo-Saxon shire, in which all able-bodied freemen had to serve to defend their shire, along with paid men. A fyrd was typically mobilised by either an ealdorman or shire reeve (sheriff), who would call out and lead the fyrd. Sometimes the King, or selected representatives, would call out and lead the fyrd to join a royal expedition.

Geld
Old English: ġield
A tax on land paid to the crown by English landholders in Anglo-Saxon and Norman England. The word gled has Old Norse origins.

Heptarchy
Not an Old English word; it is derived from the Greek words for ‘seven’ and ‘rule’, but it is important to be included in this glossary due to its link to Anglo-Saxon England. It is used to refer to the collective name applied to seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Before the 6th century there were many smaller petty kingdoms, which eventually became seven larger kingdoms; the Heptarchy. These were Wessex, Mercia, Northumbria, East Anglia, Kent, Essex, and Sussex. The Heptarchy ended with the coming of the Vikings, and the kingdoms were gradually reduced in number to four kingdoms; Northumbria, Mercia, Wessex, and East Anglia, until the English lands were unified in the 10th century and became England.

Here
Old English: hēr
The Old English word for army or troop, which can also refer to a raiding party or invading army. The city of Hereford gets its name from this meaning, deriving from ‘Here-ford’, which is Old English for ‘army crossing’ or ‘army-ford’.

Hide
Old English: hȳdan
The standard unit of land measure necessary to support one free peasant family, used to assess geld (land tax). Each hide was divided into four equal parts called virgates.

Hundred
Old English: hund, hundred, hundtēontiġ
A unit of English local government and taxation; the largest administrative division of a Shire, originally made up of 100 hides.

Housecarl
Old English: hūscarl
From Old Norse húskarl, which literally means ‘house man’, it refers to a class of well-trained, paid, full-time, private soldiers and bodyguards. Housecarls were introduced to England under Sweyn Forkbeard and Cnut the Great, when the Danish kings came to rule England and they established a body of royal housecarls. King Harold Godwinson famously had his own group of housecarls, who were the backbone of his army at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. They were considered to be among the finest soldiers in Europe.

Reeve
Old English: gerefa
In Anglo-Saxon England, a reeve was an administrative official, or bailiff, serving the king or a lesser lord in a variety of roles.

Shire
Old English: sċir
An Anglo-Saxon administrative district, roughly equivalent to our modern county. Shires were originally divisions of the country into judicial districts, often based around a prominent town or city. Shire is a common suffix used in traditional county names that end in ‘shire’, and is synonymous with the word ‘county’, such as Gloucestershire, Shropshire and Oxfordshire. Each shire was controlled by a local official called a shire reeve (sheriff).

Shire Reeve
Old English: sċir-gerefa
The modern word ‘sheriff’ derives from ‘shire reeve’ or the Anglo-Saxon ‘sċir-gerefa’; a combination of sċir (shire) and gerefa (officer or bailiff). A shire reeve was a local official in Anglo-Saxon England appointed by the King to oversee a shire, responsible for collecting taxes and enforcing the law. The King’s personal reeve was also known as the High Reeve.

Thegn / Thane
Old English: þeġn
Anglo-Saxon term meaning ‘servant’, ‘attendant’ or ‘retainer’. It generally referred to an aristocratic retainer of a king or ealdorman in later Anglo-Saxon England, who ranked at the third level in lay society, below the king and ealdormen.

Thrall
Old English: þrǣl
Anglo-Saxon term meaning ‘slaves’, who were treated as property by their owners and could be sold, beaten and even branded. The origin of the word ‘thrall’ is from the Old Norse word ‘þræll’, meaning a person who is in bondage or serfdom. The Old Norse term was borrowed into late Old English as ‘þrǣl’ from at least the middle of the 10th century.

Tun
Old English: tūn
The Old English word tūn (pronounced toon) originally meant an enclosed piece of land, a farmstead, a yard, or a homestead, which later evolved to mean a settlement – village or a town.

Virgate
Old English: gyrd landes, gierd landes, ġeardland
A varying measure of land, typically equal to a quarter of a hide, or about 30 acres. The word is a borrowing from Medieval Latin, and derives from the Old English ‘gyrd landes’, ‘gierd landes’ or ‘ġeardland’, meaning “yard of land”.

Wapentake
Old English: wǣpenġetæc
Old Norse: vápnatak
A wapentake was an administrative and judicial subdivision of certain northern and midland English counties within the Danelaw under Viking rule, such as Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and Rutland. It served the exact same purpose as an Anglo-Saxon ‘hundred’ found in the rest of England. The term comes from the Old Norse word vápnatak, via the Old English word wǣpenġetæc, meaning “weapon-touch” or “taking of weapons” or “the clashing of weapons”, signifying the way free men voted or swore allegiance at local assembly meetings by touching their weapons together.

Wealh / Wealas
Old English: wealh, wēalas, wælisc
The modern English place name ‘Wales’ derives from the same Old English root; singular ‘wealh’, plural ‘wēalas’, and ‘Welsh’ derives from the Old English word ‘wælisc’. Wealas and its variant spellings is a somewhat derogatory term meaning ‘slaves’, ‘foreigners’ or ‘strangers’ (Celt / Welsh person), which the Anglo-Saxons used to describe native Celtic Britons, and the plural form ‘Wēalas’ evolved into the name for their territory, Wales. Similarly, the Saxons referred to the Dumnonians (native Britons in Cornwall) as the Cornwælisc or Cornwealha, which over time evolved into its modern place name, Cornwall.

Wergeld / Wergild
Old English: werġeld / werġild
Literally meaning ‘man payment’ in Anglo-Saxon law as compensation for a man killed. Wergeld was the price put on a man according to his social rank, payable as a fine or compensation (a kind of blood money), by a person guilty of homicide or certain other crimes.

Witan
Old English: witan
The Old English word ‘witan’, meaning ‘wise men’, is the plural form of the word ‘wita’, which means ‘one who knows’ or ‘counsellor’. The witan was an assembly of counsellors of the Anglo-Saxon kings of England, made up of important laymen and higher ecclesiastics, including the king’s thegns. The witan met to advise the king on matters such as judicial problems.

Yield
Old English: ġieldan
Anglo-Saxon term that literally means ‘to pay’ or ‘pay for’.

Yoke
Old English: geoc
Refers to a wooden frame used to harness a pair of animals, like oxen, for ploughing or pulling a cart.