Words from Old Norse
27 words in Curio passed through Old Norse on their way into English.
About Old Norse
North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages · an earlier stage of a language still spoken today
Where
Scandinavia → Norse settlements across the North Atlantic, the British Isles, Normandy and Novgorod Rus
When
Speakers
No reliable count
No census of its speakers exists.
Family path
- Old Norse
- ScotsMiddle EnglishOld EnglishOld Northern FrenchDanish
- English
Where it came from
Old Norse is the conventional name for the medieval West and East Scandinavian dialects that developed from Proto-Norse. It was spoken in Scandinavia and in Norse settlements during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages. Over time those dialects evolved into Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.
Source: Wikipedia
Family
Old Norse grew out of North Germanic.
Languages that grew out of Old Norse: Norwegian.
The words, A to Z
- bunker
A word for underground safety once meant nothing more menacing than a seat with storage underneath.
- clog
Before it meant a shoe or a stuck drain, this word may have meant a lump of wood tied to an animal's leg.
- cobblestone
A word that's really just two humble words for rock, doubled up for emphasis.
- cogwheel
A simple compound that literally names the toothed wheel doing the work.
- cottage
A small, humble home may carry a word that traveled from Norse huts all the way to Finnish tents.
- ferry
The word for a boat that shuttles you across water was once just a verb meaning to carry.
- glade
A word for the sunlit gap in the trees carries brightness right in its bones.
- happiness
This word for deep contentment started out as a roll of the dice.
- keel
The backbone of a ship has a name that sailed in on Norse longships.
- kilt
That pleated garment gets its name from the act of hitching fabric up, not from any Scottish loom.
- knife
This everyday cutting tool got its name from a pinch, not a slice.
- lathe
The machine that spins wood or metal traces back to a simple pile of stuff.
- lift
To raise something up once meant, quite literally, to put air under it.
- meek
Being soft-natured wasn't always about timidity — it started out describing texture, not temperament.
- mould
One little word secretly holds three unrelated pasts — a shape, a soft growth, and the earth itself.
- quisling
A word that turned one man's name into a permanent verdict on betrayal.
- reef
A ridge that once meant your ribs before it meant the ocean's.
- rug
That shaggy thing underfoot once just meant 'shagginess' itself.
- saga
Before it meant a sprawling epic, this word simply meant 'something said.'
- scale
One small word secretly hides three unrelated histories — a ladder, a shell, and a bowl all answering to the same name.
- scar
A mark left behind carries two old memories at once — one of a burn, one of a cut.
- silk
This word traveled so far along ancient trade routes that its true starting point got lost somewhere along the way.
- sprint
That sudden burst of speed has roots in an old word for flinching.
- steak
A word for meat on a stick that somehow slipped into a different vowel lane than its cousins.
- Thursday
This day of the week carries a rumble of thunder hidden in its name.
- thwart
To block someone's plan is, at its root, to cut across it.
- tool
The word for the thing in your hand once meant the act of getting ready to use it.