kenning
kenning,a poetic compound, made up of two or more nouns standing for another noun, occurring in ancient Germanic languages, notably Old Norse (Icelandic) and Old English. According to the strictest deffinitions it must be metaphorical (or, in technical semantic terms, exocentric) in that the poetic compound must not be literally identical to any of its components; thus, to take a familiar Old English example, ‘arrow’ in Judith is represented by hildenaerdre, ‘battle-arrow’. The Old Norse examples are the most important and the most elaborate, especially in skaldic verse . Snorri Sturluson gives the authoritative discussion in his Edda ; he urges against kenning having more than six noun-components. Obviously, in poetry where this was one of the most important mechanisms, the kennings for very common nouns (such as ‘man’ or ‘woman’) are various and inventive. To take one example of each: ‘man’ is...
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