byzantienne asked: are you still doing Anglo-Saxon? I miss the Tales of Odd Language Things you posted last term!

aeromachia:

aeromachia:

yes, I am still anglo-saxoning! unfortunately, we are doing hardcore set text work this term, meaning there isn’t so much time to look up interesting vocab and generally procrastinate with the dictionary

here are a few scraps for your pains:

• herthbelig - ‘scrotum’, lit. ‘testicle-belly’
• nacodwraxlere - the dictionary lists this as “gymnosophist”, which is weird because the roots mean “naked wrestler”. Perhaps it’s a metaphor, but I still have no idea what it means or where it was used.
• inwyrm - intestinal parasite (“in-worm”!)
• garleac - garlic, or “spear-leek”. garis a really fucking common word in Anglo-Saxon poetry so I feel stupid for not making this connection before…
• buterfleoge - should be obvious really
  

and since we were talking about linden-shields a while ago, I looked up the root word, which turns out to be lind, nm, “lime-tree, shield of lime wood”. So there you go!

(you may also be interested to know that while looking, I also found bizant, a particular type of gold coin. Infuriatingly, my dictionary offers no etymology, so I have no idea if it could possibly be related to your area of expertise…)

rebloggable version because Del wanted it!

Yes! Bizants are a kind of gold standard. They’re actually nomismata, the large Byzantine gold coin. They go everywhere in early/mid-medieval Europe, kind of like Venetian ducats do later on.

(also Anglo-Saxon continues to be cool)

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5. byzantienne reblogged this from aeromachia and added:

   Yes! Bizants are a kind of gold standard. They’re actually nomismata, the large Byzantine gold coin. They go everywhere...

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10. amantes-amentes reblogged this from apiphile and added:

    Re: gymnosophist - gymnos does mean naked in Greek, although sophist does not mean wrestler!

11. apiphile reblogged this from nothingbutthedreams and added:

    Anglo-Saxon is the fucking best.

12. nothingbutthedreams reblogged this from aeromachia and added:

    Yayyy. I missed these random posts. Language is pretty fascinating.

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15. fishcollective said: TESTICLE-BELLY! Could a bizant be a byzantine coin? Cause they tend to circulate a lot. And fyi: “lind” is the exact Swedish word for that type of tree.
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