Guess what these words mean!

One of the groups to which I belong is all about Old English, the Saxon language and the origins of many of the words we use today. It’s a very social, informal group and we natter on about all sorts of things. Today we were looking at the story of Apollonius of Tyre as told in an Old English document, apparently called the first English novel. The story, however is much older, going back to Ancient Greece, and concerns the adventures of Apollonius who has to flee the wrath of the King Antiochus of Antioch…  It was interesting but I admit, we did struggle with some of the language!

We all try to bring something to discuss, and i came across some old English words which I asked the others to guess their meaning. Can you guess what these words mean, the words in brackets are to help pronunciation):

• hleahtor
• frēond-lufu (FRAY-ond-luv-uh).
• cnotta (K’NOT-ta)
• ofer-genga (OV-er-YEN-ga)
• mynet (MUH-net)
• wægn (WAYN)
• mūs (MOOS)

… and some tricky ones:

• īdel-gilp (EE-dell-yilp)
• scearp-sīne (SHAY-arp-SEE-neh)
• hēaðu-sigel (HAY-ah-thuh-SI-yell)

I’ll share the answers tomorrow!

The featured image, by the way, is of the door into the Anglo-Saxon church of St Denys in York