The Old English Nominal Compounds in -Rád

Abstract

In Old English occur seven compound nouns (brimrád, hronrád, hwéolrád, seglrád, stréamrád, swanrád, wígrád) the second element of which is customarily interpreted in dictionaries, translations, handbooks, and critical writings as ‘road’ (via, Weg, Bahn); and this interpretation is the basis for the widespread dogma that the five of these compounds that refer to water are metaphors, or at least figures of speech, “poetic terms for the sea.” Unquestionably, this element is the word, occurring in OE in the simplex, which in Modern English means ‘road: an ordinary line of communication used by persons passing between different places, usually one wide enough to admit of the passage of vehicles as well as of horses or travellers on foot’ (OED). In no extant OE text, however, so far as the recorded instances indicate, does the simplex rád have this meaning; on the contrary, according to the OED the simplex first appears in this sense at the end of the sixteenth century—in 1596, in Shakespeare's I Henry IV II.I.16. Therefore, it is open to doubt that the bound element did actually in OE have the modern meaning in seven of the twelve extant nominal compounds in -rád. The presumption would be that in these seven, as in the other five (éorod, flocrád, setlrád, sweglrád, punorrád), it had a sense, or senses, not too remote from those of the simplex or of the related verb rídan, and that the construction of these compounds as well as the contexts in which they stand should form the basis of conclusions concerning their applications and uses, literal or figurative. The evidence afforded by extant OE texts supports the presumption.