An Introduction to Old English Edinburgh University Press

Englalond ‘England, land of the Angles’, and it could be argued, but
with less probability, that these are not genuine compounds but simply
syntactic groups.
Noun compounds are also formed with both adjectival and with
adverbial modifiers. Typical examples of the former include ha¯lig
.
dæg
.
‘holy day’ (cf. holiday) and wildgo¯s ‘wild goose’; for the latter there are
many examples parallel in structure to for
†
fæder ‘forefather’ and oferbra¯w
‘eyebrow’. Occasionally we find noun compounds consisting of three
words (compare railway station above), as in niht-butorfle¯og
.
e ‘night butter-
fly’ = ‘moth’.
Turning now to adjective compounds, here too the modifier may be
either a noun, an adjective or an adverb. Since these types are, for the
most part, not different in principle from the noun compounds I have
just discussed, I need only cite a few examples. Thus we find do¯mg
.
eorn
‘eager for glory’, ealmihtig
. ‘almighty’ and eftboren ‘born again’. Never-
theless there are some less-expected formations. One such type consists
of a manner adverb plus an adjective, as in de¯op
†
ancol ‘deeply thinking’ =
‘contemplative’, a type which does not occur today. Another interesting
group has a present participle as the head, for example ealodrincende
‘beer-drinking’, a formation which is very active in the present day as
well.
One recurrent problem in the treatment of Old English compounding
and affixation is that it is not always easy to determine whether a particu-
lar item is part of a compound or rather an affix. For example, consider
the word wı¯sdom ‘wisdom’. At first sight it looks certain that -dom is a
suffix, for there are many other examples such as læ¯c
.
edom ‘medicine’ and
†
e¯owdom ‘slavery’. But there is a problem, for there exists also the simple
independent word do¯m and this can also occur as the first part of a
compound, as in do¯mg
.
eorn ‘glory-eager’ or do¯mdæg
. ‘doom-day’. The line
between compounding and affixation, therefore, may be rather fuzzy. An
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element such as -dom is often referred to as a suffixoid because of its
rather intermediate status. Other possible suffixoids include -had ‘hood’,
-lac with a rather general meaning of ‘act’ or ‘state’, as in re¯aflac ‘robbery’,
that is ‘act of robbing’, similarly -ræden in campræden ‘fighting’ from
campian ‘fight’. There are adjectival suffixoids too, for example -fæst and
-least.
Compounds where the head is a verb show a striking contrast with
present-day English, although not, it should be pointed out, with either
Dutch or German. For here a concept I have already mentioned, namely
that of separable and inseparable verbs, comes into play. In compound
verbs the modifying element is either an adverb or a preposition. Thus
we find examples such as æfterfolgian ‘pursue’. That seems simple enough,
but I should emphasise the importance of understanding the difference
between these two types of verb, as outlined above.
But compare oferfeohtan ‘conquer’ and for
†
brengan ‘bring forth’ when,
for instance, they occur with to¯ ‘in order to’: what we find is to¯ oferfeohtanne
but for
†
to¯ brenganne. If, as is the case with for
†