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Can you create some modern day kennings, similar to the ones used in Beowulf?
Quick answer:
Modern-day kennings, inspired by those in Beowulf, replace single nouns with compound expressions. Examples include "Troll haven" for social media, "Lion's lair" for YouTube, "Shame farewelled" for deleting an Instagram account after embarrassment, "Ice wolf" for a dog eager to play in snow, "Thought desert" for TV, "Jock-sweat" for the effort in sports, "Gold-diminisher" for a lawyer, "Hall of pain" for high school, and "Child-trap forest" also for high school.
In Old English, the language in which Beowulf was written, a kenning is a compound figurative expression used in place of a single noun. So, for example, we have "battle sweat" for blood, and "whale-road" for sea. Modern-day examples could possibly include all of the following:
- Troll haven: social media. (Especially Twitter.)
- Lion's lair: YouTube, with its seemingly inexhaustible supply of cat videos.
- Shame farewelled: When someone deletes their Instagram account after they've inadvertently posted some highly embarrassing pictures.
- Ice wolf: When your dog just can't wait to get outside and start playing in the snow.
- Thought desert: TV.
- Jock-sweat: The effort required to win a football game.
- Gold-diminisher: A lawyer.
- Hall of pain: High school. (But not all of them, of course.)
- Child-trap forest: That would be high school again.
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