Sceop
I learned a new vocabulary word today! (Well, yesterday, but today I found out what the meaning is.)
The word is "sceop." I found it in a poetic edda of awesomeness, and was utterly perplexed as to its meaning. I've read a few tales in my time, some of them fairly out-of-date, and I'm not the best student ever so I don't always look up the words I don't recognize. I mean, most of them I've run across before somewhere or other, and understand the meaning even if I don't know the exact definition of the word. Failing that, I can figure out the meaning by context. But sceop? Not a chance in Hell. And it seemed to be a title, or a descriptor, but I couldn't figure out what it meant. In context, it could have meant anything from "blonde" to "ugly" to "really facking strong" to "clever person" to "idiot, but good with words." It could have meant anything, really.
So I thought to myself, you know what, I'd probably better find out what this actually means. And I googled it, and found mostly stuff about stem cell research. And something called the South Carolina Emergency Management Division (or Operations Plan, that's where you get the -OP so that it isn't SCEMD).
BUT the description under the fourth link down started off with, "He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend; þa middangeard" and I thought, aha, that looks promising. ...Okay, actually I thought, what is that I don't even, but it did turn out to be more promising than the other links. Of course, I only realized this after I went frantically searching for something, anything that wasn't in facking German, then went back and looked at it again despairingly and realized, hey wait a minute, middangeard, that looks like...midgard...oh hey wow that's Old English, that's not German, wow, do I ever feel stupid.
It turned out to be Caedmon's Hymn, and it had "sceop" in it (Beowulf had "sceop" too, somewheres around line 80 or so if I remember correctly)! And I went looking for translations, but the closest I got was that maybe "sceop" meant "shaper" or "creator." Because I am a lazy beast, I threw up my hands, went back to the blog where I had found it, and posted a comment begging any history/literature buffs in the audience for help. Also the author himself, but I wasn't sure if he would respond because he doesn't respond to every comment. There are usually a lot of comments.
Well, he did post back. Turns out "sceop" means "storyteller," which didn't really surprise me because that's what the character in question did for a living, but it isn't what I would have guessed.
So you can add "sceop" to your list of words dictionary.com doesn't know. Here's a link to a cool webpage with lots of terms: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_S.html
The word is "sceop." I found it in a poetic edda of awesomeness, and was utterly perplexed as to its meaning. I've read a few tales in my time, some of them fairly out-of-date, and I'm not the best student ever so I don't always look up the words I don't recognize. I mean, most of them I've run across before somewhere or other, and understand the meaning even if I don't know the exact definition of the word. Failing that, I can figure out the meaning by context. But sceop? Not a chance in Hell. And it seemed to be a title, or a descriptor, but I couldn't figure out what it meant. In context, it could have meant anything from "blonde" to "ugly" to "really facking strong" to "clever person" to "idiot, but good with words." It could have meant anything, really.
So I thought to myself, you know what, I'd probably better find out what this actually means. And I googled it, and found mostly stuff about stem cell research. And something called the South Carolina Emergency Management Division (or Operations Plan, that's where you get the -OP so that it isn't SCEMD).
BUT the description under the fourth link down started off with, "He ærest sceop eorðan bearnum heofon to hrofe, halig scyppend; þa middangeard" and I thought, aha, that looks promising. ...Okay, actually I thought, what is that I don't even, but it did turn out to be more promising than the other links. Of course, I only realized this after I went frantically searching for something, anything that wasn't in facking German, then went back and looked at it again despairingly and realized, hey wait a minute, middangeard, that looks like...midgard...oh hey wow that's Old English, that's not German, wow, do I ever feel stupid.
It turned out to be Caedmon's Hymn, and it had "sceop" in it (Beowulf had "sceop" too, somewheres around line 80 or so if I remember correctly)! And I went looking for translations, but the closest I got was that maybe "sceop" meant "shaper" or "creator." Because I am a lazy beast, I threw up my hands, went back to the blog where I had found it, and posted a comment begging any history/literature buffs in the audience for help. Also the author himself, but I wasn't sure if he would respond because he doesn't respond to every comment. There are usually a lot of comments.
Well, he did post back. Turns out "sceop" means "storyteller," which didn't really surprise me because that's what the character in question did for a living, but it isn't what I would have guessed.
So you can add "sceop" to your list of words dictionary.com doesn't know. Here's a link to a cool webpage with lots of terms: http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_S.html