Old Norse Words

A few Old Norse words are commonly used in our current speech. For example, take and skull come from Old Norse. Even give and get show Old Norse influence since their Old English forms used not /g/ but /j/; the change in consonant is due to influence from the Old Norse forms.

Some Anglishers see Old Norse words as foreign influence and so wish to use their equivalents passed down from Old English instead, whereas others are open to Old Norse words for a few different reasons, the main one being that they are still Germanic and thus do not conflict with Anglish's main goal. This page lists out modern English equivalents that one can use however one wishes.

Notably, the third-person plural pronouns come from Old Norse. For more information, see here.

Note that some words are originally from Old English, but later became influenced in meaning by their Old Norse equivalents. For example, -ling was used in Old English, but its diminutive meaning was small. That its diminutive meaning rose in Middle English is generally thought to be due to Old Norse influence. Whether this influence is acceptable depends on one's tastes.

There are a few different ways to come up with modern English equivalents:


 * 1) Since English and Old Norse are both Germanic speeches, they naturally have cognates. For example, stoup has the Old English cognate stēap, and so we can use steap, the expected modernization of the Old English word.
 * 2) Some cognates also differ only on whether the initial consonant was palatalized. For example, give is at least influenced by the Old Norse word, since the expected modernization of the Old English cognate is yive, which underwent palatalization. Hence, Germanic words beginning with sh, ch, or y are very likely to be native.
 * 3) Some words have no cognates, one reason being that the Norse word was a Norse formation. For example, husband is a North Germanic formation and so is not found in West Germanic. In this case, were (as in werewolf) can be used to replace husband in the meaning of married man.
 * 4) Sometimes, cognates later diverged in meaning. For example, skirt is the Old Norse cognate to shirt and meant the same thing as shirt, but it later changed meaning, and so we cannot use shirt to replace skirt now.
 * 5) Sometimes, there is no word, and unless one wants to make new words, one simply has to use multiple words to translate the Old Norse word. For example, gait can be replaced with the phrase way of walking, unless one wishes to make a new word such as walkwise.

Of course, Norse words referring to Norse things such as hersir are generally deemed acceptable, since it is natural to borrow a foreign word to refer to a foreign thing.