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The first known mention of litotes is in a letter from Cicero in 55 BC . Cicero uses the word to mean simplicity (or frugality) of life. The meaning and the function of the word changed from 'simple' to the idea of understatement that involves double negatives, a way to state things simply. Old Norse had several types of litotes. These points ...
A kenning (Old English kenning [cʰɛnːiŋɡ], Modern Icelandic [cʰɛnːiŋk]) is a circumlocution, an ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech, used instead of an ordinary noun in Old Norse, Old English, and later Icelandic poetry. This list is not intended to be comprehensive. Kennings for a particular character are listed in that character ...
The French actress Sarah Bernhardt was considered insufficiently understated in English terms. Photograph by Félix Nadar, c. 1864. This attitude of understatement was exemplified by a comment upon Sarah Bernhardt's violent depiction of Cleopatra in the 1891 play of that title: "How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear Queen!"
Possibly from Old Norse krasa (="shatter") via Old French crasir [55] creek kriki ("corner, nook") through ME creke ("narrow inlet in a coastline") altered from kryk perhaps influenced by Anglo-Norman crique itself from a Scandinavian source via Norman-French [56] crochet from Old Norse krokr "hook" via French crochet "small hook; canine tooth ...
Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic, [1] or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate ...
From skrækja, meaning "bawl, shout, or yell" [29] or from skrá, meaning "dried skin", in reference to the animal pelts worn by the Inuit. [29] The name the Norse Greenlanders gave the previous inhabitants of North America and Greenland. Skuggifjord Hudson Strait Straumfjörð "Current-fjord", "Stream-fjord" or "Tide-fjord". A fjord in Vinland.
The compound noun weregild means "remuneration for a man", from Proto-Germanic *wira-"man, human" and *geld-a-"retaliation, remuneration". [2] In the south Germanic area, this is the most common term used to mean "payment for killing a man" (Old High German werigelt, Langobardic wergelt, Old English wer(e)gild), whereas in the North Germanic area, the more common term is Old Norse mangæld ...
The longest known inscription in the Elder Futhark, and one of the youngest, consists of some 200 characters and is found on the early 8th-century Eggjum stone, and may even contain a stanza of Old Norse poetry. The transition to Younger Futhark begins from the 6th century, with transitional examples like the Björketorp or Stentoften stones.