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Welcome to day 11 of the April Blogging from A to Z Challenge!
If you’ve studied any Old English poetry, you’ve probably come across kennings: compound-word metaphors used as substitutes for the words they represent, adding variety and aiding the writer in maintaining meter. A famous kenning from Beowulf is whale-road for sea. A popular vocabulary book used in Old English classes is even titled using a kenning, Word-hoard: An Introduction to Old English Vocabulary by Stephen A. Barney. Part of the beauty of kennings like these is that they don’t make a comparison; rather, they bring to attention an unnoticed aspect of some object. They don’t layer on new meanings, but view things through a new perspective.
On the drive taking my husband to work today, we made up some of our own. If a dictionary can be a word-hoard, could a library be a book-hoard? How about bird-field for sky, or bird-seat for a power line? Try it yourself. What are some kennings you can come up with?
