uhtceare

Oct. 16th, 2023 07:32 am
prettygoodword: text: words are sexy (Default)
[personal profile] prettygoodword
uhtceare (OOT-key-are-a) - n., lying awake with anxiety before dawn.


This isn't really a fair word to run, as it isn't English -- it's Old English. So not only not the right language, but rare to boot, being a hapax legomenon, or word used only once in a surviving corpus (which could be either a single text, an author's works, or entire language, depending on context -- here it's the language). But it shows up in lists of old, forgotten words that are fun to know. The word is a compound of ūhta, the time of night before dawn +‎ caru, care/worry/anxiety, and the single known instance is from "The Wife's Lament": hæfde iċ ūhtċeare hwǣr mīn lēodfruma landes wǣre (I had pre-dawn anxiety, wondering where in the world my prince might be).

---L.

Date: 2023-10-16 06:12 pm (UTC)
full_metal_ox: A gold Chinese Metal Ox zodiac charm. (Default)
From: [personal profile] full_metal_ox
Which makes at least four of us—there’s a clear and present job opening for this word!

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