twelve years old

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(gömul, gamalt), a.

1) old;

á gamals aldri, in his old age;

opt er gott þat er gamlir kveða, old men’s sayings are often good;

2) old, aged, of a certain age;

hve gamall maðr ertu, how old art thou?

tólf vetra (gen.) gamall, twelve years old.

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contr. forms, gamlan, gamla, gamlir, gamlar, gömlum, etc., fem. sing. and neut. pl. gömul; neut. sing. gamalt; the compar. and superl. from a different root, viz. compar. ellri, superl. ellztr, mod. eldri eldstr or elztr: [not recorded in Ulf., who renders αρχαιος by alþeis; but in A. S. gamol and gomel occur, although rarely even in Beowulf; in mod. Engl. and Germ. it is lost, but is in full use in all Scandin. dialects; Swed. gammal; Dan. gammel; Norse gamal, fem. gomol, Ivar Aasen]:

I. old, Lat. senex; in the sayings, þeygi á saman gamalt og ungt, Úlf. 3. 44; opt er gott þat er gamlir kveða, Hm. 134, Fb. i. 212; íllt að kenna gömlum hundi að sitja; gamlir eru elztir, old are the eldest, i. e. the most cunning, clever; tvisvar verðr gamall maðr barn; engi verðr eldri en gamall; en þótt konungr þessi sé góðr maðr … þá mun hann þó eigi verða ellri en gamall, Fms. iv. 282; faðir minn var gamall, Nj. 31; g. spámaðr, an old spae-man, 656 B. 12; hence gamals-aldr, m. old age, Ld. 4, Fms. ii. 71: compds, af-garnall, fjör-g., eld-g., q. v.; cp. also ör-gemlir = Germ. uralt, a giant in Edda.

2. grown up, old, of animals; arðr-uxi gamall, Grág. i. 502; gamlir sauðir, old rams; gjalda grís fyrir gamalt svín, Ó. H. 86; fyrr á gömlum uxanum at bæsa en kálfinum, a pun, Fms. vi. 28.

3. old, of things, freq. in mod. usage, but the ancients use gamall of persons or living things, and distinguish between gamall and forn (q. v.); a man is ‘gamall,’ but he wears ‘forn’ klæði ( old clothes), thus in the verse Fms. xi. 43 gamall prob. refers to Gorm and not to land; Merl. 1. 61 is corrupt; vide gjallr (below); gamall siðr, Anal. 187, does not appear in Fb. iii. 401 (the original of the mod. text in Anal.)

II. old, aged, of a certain age; nokkurra vetra gamall, some years old, Fms. xi. 78; fjögurra vetra gömul, Þiðr. 221; hve gamall maðr ertu, how old art thou? Ísl. ii. 220; tólf vetra gamall, 204; fimm, sex, vetra gamall, Grág. i. 502; vetr-gamall, a winter old; árs-gamall, a year old; misseris-gamall, half a year old; nætr-g., a night old, etc.

III. in pr. names, hinn Gamli is added as a soubriquet, like ‘major’ in Lat., to distinguish an older man from a younger man of the same name; hinn gamli and hinn ungi also often answer to the Engl. ‘father and son;’ thus, Hákon Gamli and Hákon Ungi, old and young H., Fms.; also, Jörundr Gamli, Ketilbjörn Gamli, Örlygr Gamli, Bragi Gamli, Ingimundr hinn Gamli, etc., vide Landn.; Ari hinn Gamli, Bs. i. 26, to distinguish him from his grandson Ari Sterki; cp. the Lat. Cato Major: in some of the instances above it only means the old = Lat. priscus.

B. The compar. is ellri and superl. ellztr; eigi ellra en einnar nætr, 1812. 57; fjórtan vetra gamall eðr ellri, K. Á. 190; enir ellri synir Brjáns, Nj. 269; inn ellzti, 38; ellztr bræðranna, Grág. i. 307; hann var ellztr, Eg. 27, Fms. i. 20, passim.

a. twelve years old.

(pl. hundruð), n. hundred; tírœtt h. = 100; tólfrœtt h. = 120; hundruðum, by (in) hundreds; as value, one hundred and twenty ells of the stuff wadmal; h. frítt, a hundred paid in cattle; tólf hundruð mórend, twelve hundred in dark-striped wadmal; hundrað silfrs, ? the silver value of 120 ells (= 20 ounces).

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n. pl. hundruð; the form hund- (q. v.) only occurs in a few old compd words: [Goth. hunda, pl.; A. S. hund; O. H. G. hunt; the extended form in Hel. and old Frank, hundered; Germ. hundert; Dan. hundrede; Swed. hundra; the inflexive syllable is prob. akin to - ræðr in átt-ræðr]:—a hundred; the Scandinavians of the heathen time (and perhaps also all Teutonic people) seem to have known only a duo-decimal hundred (= 12 × 10 or 120); at that time 100 was expressed by tíu-tíu, cp. Ulf. taihun-taihund = ten-teen; Pal Vídalín says,—hundrað tólfrætt er sannlega frá heiðni til vor komið, en hið tíræða er líkast að Norðrlönd hafi ekki vitað af fyrr en Kristni kom hér og með henni lærdómr þeirrar aldar, Skýr. s. v. Hundrað (fine): but with the introduction of Christianity came in the decimal hundred, the two being distinguished by adjectives,—tólfrætt hundrað = 120, and tírætt hundrað = 100. But still the old popular duodecimal system continued in almost all matters concerned with economical or civil life, in all law phrases, in trade, exchange, property, value, or the like, and the decimal only in ecclesiastical or scholastic matters (chronology, e. g. Íb. ch. 1, 10). At the same time the word in speech and writing was commonly used without any specification of tírætt or tólfrætt, for, as Pal Vídalín remarks, every one acquainted with the language knew which was meant in each case; even at the present time an Icel. farmer counts his flocks and a fisherman his share (hlutr) by the duodecimal system; and everybody knows that a herd or share of one hundred and a half means 120 + 60 = 180. In old writers the popular way of counting is now and then used even in chronology and in computation, e. g. when Ari Frode (Íb. ch. 4) states that the year consists of three hundred and four days (meaning 364); the census of franklins given by the same writer (where the phrase is hundruð heil = whole or full hundreds) is doubtless reckoned by duodecimal, not decimal hundreds, Íb. ch. 10; and in the census of priests and churches taken by bishop Paul (about A. D. 1200) ‘tíræð’ is expressively added, lest duodecimal hundreds should be understood, Bs. i. 136. The Landn. (at end) contains a statement (from Ari?) that Iceland continued pagan for about a hundred years, i. e. from about 874–997 A. D. In the preface to Ólafs S., Snorri states that two duodecimal hundreds (tvau hundruð tólfræð) elapsed from the first colonisation of Iceland before historical writing began (i. e. from about A. D. 874–1115): levies of ships and troops are in the laws and Sagas counted by duodecimal hundreds, e. g. the body-guard of king Olave consisted of a hundred hirð-men, sixty house-carles and sixty guests, in all ‘two hundred’ men, i. e. 240, Mork. 126; the sons of earl Strút-Harald had a hundred men, of whom eighty were billetted out and forty returned, Fms. xi. 88, 89; hálft hundrað, a half hundred = sixty, Mork. l. c.

2. a division of troops = 120; hundraðs-flokkr, Fms. vi. (in a verse).

II. in indef. sense, hundreds, a host, countless number, see hund-, as also in the adverb, phrase, hundruðum, by hundreds (indefinitely), Fms. vi. 407, Þiðr. 275, 524: in mod. usage as adjective and indecl., except the pl. in -uð, thus hundruð ásauðum, Dipl. iv. 10.

B. As value, a hundred, i. e. a hundred and twenty ells of the stuff wadmal, and then simply value to that amount (as a pound sterling in English). All property, real as well as personal, is even at present in Icel. taxed by hundreds; thus an estate is a ‘twenty, sixty, hundred’ estate; a franklin gives his tithable property as amounting to so and so many hundreds. As for the absolute value of a hundred, a few statements are sufficient, thus e. g. a milch cow, or six ewes with lambs, counts for a hundred, and a hundrað and a kúgildi (cow’s value) are equal: the charge for the alimentation of a pauper for twelve months was in the law (Jb. 165) fixed to four hundred and a half for a male person, but three hundred and a half for a female; cp. also the phrase, það er ekki hundrað í hættunni, there is no hundred at stake, no great risk! In olden times a double standard was used,—the wool or wadmal standard, called hundrað talið = a hundred by tale, i. e. a hundred and twenty ells as stated above, and a silver standard, called hundrað vegit, a hundred by weight, or hundrað silfrs, a hundred in silver, amounting to two marks and a half = twenty ounces = sixty örtugar; but how the name hundred came to be applied to it is not certain, unless half an örtug was taken as the unit. It is probable that originally both standards were identical, which is denoted by the phrase, sex álna eyrir, six ells to an ounce, or a hundred and twenty ells equal to twenty ounces (i. e. wadmal and silver at par); but according as the silver coinage was debased, the phrases varied between nine, ten, eleven, twelve ells to an ounce (N. G. L. i. 80, 81, 387, 390, passim), which denote bad silver; whereas the phrase ‘three ells to an ounce’ (þriggja álna eyrir, Sturl. i. 163, passim, or a hundred in wadmal equal to half a hundred in silver) must refer either to a double ell or to silver twice as pure: the passage in Grág. i. 500 is somewhat obscure, as also Rd. 233: the words vegin, silfrs, or talin are often added, but in most cases no specification is given, and the context must shew which of the two standards is there meant; the wool standard is the usual one, but in cases of weregild the silver standard seems always to be understood; thus a single weregild (the fine for a man’s life) was one hundred, Njála passim.

2. the phrases, hundrað frítt, a hundred paid in cattle, Finnb. 236; tólf hundruð mórend, twelve hundred in dark striped wadmal, Nj. 225; hundrað í búsgögnum ok í húsbúningi, Vm. 65; hundraðs-gripr, hestr, hross, kapall, hvíla, sæng, rekkja, psaltari, etc., a beast, a horse, a bed, etc., of a hundred’s value, Am. 2, 10, Vm. 25, 39, 60, 153, Jm. 3, 30; hundraðs-úmagi, a person whose maintenance costs a hundred, Vm. 156; hundraðs virði, a hundred’s value, 68. For references see the Sagas and laws passim, and for more information see Mr. Dasent’s Essay in Burnt Njal.

C. A hundred, a political division which in olden times was common to all Teut. nations, but is most freq. in old Swedish laws, where several hundreds made a hérað or shire; cp. the A. S. and Engl. hundred, Du Cange hundredum; old Germ. hunderti, see Grimm’s Rechts Alterthümer; the centum pagi of Caesar, Bell. Gall. iv. ch. 1, is probably the Roman writer’s misconception of the Teut. division of land into hundreds; this is also the case with Tacit. Germ. ch. 12: cp. the Swed. local names Fjaðrunda-land, Áttundaland, and Tíunda-land, qs. Fjaðr-hunda land, Átthunda land, Tíhunda land, i. e. a combination of four, eight, ten hundreds. The original meaning was probably a community of a hundred and twenty franklins or captains. This division is not found in Icel.

(pl. -ir), f. thousand.

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f.; sérhverja þúsund, Stj. 298; á þúsund (dat.), Sks. 705; tvær, þrjár … þúsundir, 623. 53: in mod. usage it is mostly neut. (influenced by Latin?), but also fem. It is spelt þús-hund, Barl. 53; þús-hundum, Fms. vi. 409 (v. l.), Geisli 49; another form þús-hundrað (q. v.) is freq., esp. in Stj., Barl.; this double form -hund and -hundrað answers to the equally double form of ‘hundred,’ see p. 292, and is a proof that þúsund is a compound word, the latter part of which is ‘hund’ or ‘hundred;’ the etymology of the former part ‘þús’ is less certain; it is, we believe, akin to þysja, þyss, þaus-nir (a lost strong verb þúsa, þaus, þusu); þúsund would thus literally mean a swarm of hundreds: [in Goth. the gender varies, þûsundi, pl. þusundjos = χίλιοι, or þusundja, neut.; A. S. þûsend; Engl. thousand; O. H. G. dusunta; Germ. tausend, qs. dausend; Swed. tusende and tusen; Dan. tusinde; Dutch tuysend: this word is also common to the Slavon. languages: again, the Lapp, duhat and Finn. tuhat are no doubt borrowed from the Slavon. or Scandin.; the Gr., Lat., and Sansk. use other words]—a thousand.

B. There is little doubt that with the ancient heathen Scandinavians (and perhaps all Teutons), before their contact with the civilised southern people, the notion of numbers was limited, and that their thousand was not a definite number, but a vague term, denoting a swarm, crowd, host (cp. the Gr. μυρίοι): in ancient lays it occurs thrice (Hkv., Em., Fas. i. 502), but indefinitely; hvat þrym er þar sem þúsund bifisk eðr mengi til mikit, what a din is there as if a thousand were shaking, or an over-mickle multitude, Em. 2; sjau þúsundir, Hkv. 1. 49, literally = seven thousands, but in fact meaning seven hosts of men.

2. the dat. pl. þúsundum is, like huudruðum, used adverbially = by thousands, in countless numbers, Fms. vi. 409 (in a verse), Geisli 49.

3. in the ancient popular literature, uninfluenced by southern writers, ‘þúsund,’ as a definite number, occurs, we think, not half-a-dozen times. As the multiple of ten duodecimal hundreds, ere the decimal hundred was adopted, ‘þnsund’ would mean twelve decimal hundreds; and such is its use in the Sverris Saga, Fms. viii. 40, where one vellum says ‘tvær þúsundir,’ whilst the others, by a more idiomatic phrase, call it ‘twenty hundreds.’

II. in ecclesiastical writers, and in annals influenced by the Latin and the like, it is frequent enough; tíu þúsundir, fjórtán þúsundir, Fms. i. 107, 108 (annalistic records); fimm þúsundir, xi. 386, Al. 111; tíu þúsundum, Sks. 705; tíu þúsundum sinna hundrað þúsunda, Hom.; þúsund þúsunda, a thousand of thousands, i. e. a million, (mod.); hundrað þúsundir rasta ok átta tigir þúsunda, … hundrað þúsund mílna, Fb. i. 31 (in the legend of Eric the Far-traveller and Paradise, taken from some church-legend); fjórar þúsundir, Þiðr. 234: or of the years of the world, sex þúsundir vetra, Fs. 197; sjau þúsundir vetra, Landn. 34.

C. REMARKS.—The popular way of counting high numbers was not by thousands, but by tens (decades) and duodecimal hundreds as factors; thus ten … twenty hundreds, and then going on three, four, five, six … tens of hundreds (a ‘ten of hundreds’ being = 1200). The following references may illustrate this—tíu hundruð, ellefu hundruð, tólf hundruð, þrettán hundruð, fimtán hundruð …, Íb. 17, Ó. H. 119, 201, Fms. vii. 295, xi. 383, 385. From twenty and upwards—tuttugu hundrað manna, twenty hundreds of men, Fms. vii. 324, viii. 40; hálfr þriðitugr hundraða skipa, two tens and a half hundreds of ships, i. e. twenty-five hundreds, Fas. i. 378; þrjá tigu hundraða manna, three tens of hundreds of men, Fms. viii. 311; var skorat manntal, hafði hann meirr enn þrjá tigu hundraða manna, vii. 204; þrír tigir hundraða, D. N. v. 18; user fjorir tigir hundraða manna, nearly four tens of hundreds of men, Fms. vii. 275; á fimta tigi hundraða, on the fifth ten of hundreds, i. e. from four to five tens of hundreds, viii. 321; sex tigir hundraða, six tens of hundreds, 311, xi. 390; sex tigu hundraða manna, Fb. ii. 518, D. I. i. 350,—all odd amounts being neglected. The highest number recorded as actually reckoned in this way is ‘six tens of hundreds’ (fimtán tigir hundraða, fifteen tens of hundreds, Fms. viii. 321, v. l., is a scribe’s error): it is probable that no reckoning exceeded twelve tens of hundreds. All high multiples were unintelligible to the ancients; the number of the Einherjar in Walhalla is in the old lay Gm. thus expressed,—there are ‘five hundred doors in Walhalla, and five tens beside (the ‘five tens’ are, by the way, merely added for alliteration’s sake), and eight hundred Einherjar will walk out of each door when they go out to fight the Wolf’ (on the Day of final Doom). There seems to have been some dim exaggerated notion of a definite thousand in an ancient lay, only preserved in a half alliterative prose paraphrase, Fas. i. 502, where a mythical host is given thus,—there were thirty-three phalanxes, each of five ‘thousand,’ each thousand of thirteen hundreds, each hundred four times counted. The armies in the battle of Brawalla, the greatest of the mythical age, are given, not in numbers, but by the space the ranks occupied, Skjöld. S. ch. 8. This resembles the story in Ó. H. ch. 59, of the two young brothers, king’s sons: when asked what they would like to have most of, the one said: ‘Cows.’ ‘And how many?’ ‘As many,’ said he, ‘as could stand packed in a row round the lake (Mjösen in Norway) and drink.’ ‘But you?’ they asked the other boy: ‘House-carles’ (soldiers), said he. ‘And how many?’ ‘As many,’ said he, ‘as would in one meal eat up all my brother’s cows.’ Add also the tale of the King and the Giant, and the number of the giant’s house-carles, Maurer’s Volksagen 306. No less elementary was the rule for division and fractions, of which a remarkable instance is preserved in an ancient Icelandic deed, called Spákonu-arfr, published in D. I. i. 305. See also the words tigr, hundrað, skor, skora, and the remarks in Gramm. p. xix. The Homeric numeration, as set forth in Mr. Gladstone’s Homeric Studies, vol. iii, p. 425 sqq., is highly interesting, and bears a striking resemblance to that of the ancient Scandinavians. We may notice that in Iceland land and property are still divided into hundreds (hundreds of ells = 120), see hundrað B; in this case a thousand is never used, but units and hundreds of hundreds as factors, thus, sex tögu hundraða, in Reykh. Máld, (a deed of the 12th century), and so still in mod. usage; a wealthy man of the 15th century is said to have bequeathed to his daughters in land, ‘tólf hundruð hundraða ok ellefu-tíu og tvau hundruð betr, en í lausafé fimm hundruð hundraða,’ i. e. twelve hundreds of hundreds and ‘eleventy’ and two hundreds, and in movables five hundreds of hundreds, Feðga-æfi 16 (by the learned Bogi Benidiktsson of Staðarfell in Iceland, A. D. 1771–1849); sjau hundruð hundraða og þrjátigi hundruð betr, 21; hann eptir-lét börnum sínum fjármuni upp á níu hundruð hundraða, 22,—a proof that in very remote times, when this valuation of land first took place, ‘thousand’ was still unknown as a definite number.

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1) year; at ári, next year; telja árum, to count time by years;

2) plenty, abundance, fruitfulnes (þá var ár um öll lönd);

3) the name of the Rune A.

f. oar; draga skip á árum, to pull the boat with oars; þungr undir árum, heavy to pull; draga árar um e-t, to contend for; koma eigi ár sinni fyrlr borð, to be under restraint.

n. first beginning; ár var alda, in times of yore; at morgins ári, um morguninn í ár = árla um morguninn, early in the morning.

1) anciently, of yore;

2) early (ár um morguninn).

from á, river.

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n. [Goth. jêr; A. S. gear; Engl. year; Germ. jabr; the Scandin. idioms all drop the j, as in ungr, young; cp. also the Gr. ωρα; Lat. hora; Ulf. renders not only ετος but also sometimes καιρός and χρόνος by jêr].

I. a year, = Lat. annus, divided into twelve lunar months, each of 30 days, with four intercalary days, thus making 364 days; as the year was reckoned about the middle of the 10th century (the original calculation probably only reckoned 360 days, and made up the difference by irregular intercalary months). About the year 960 Thorstein Surt introduced the sumarauki (intercalary week), to be inserted every seventh year, thus bringing the year up to 365 days. After the introduction of Christianity (A. D. 1000) the sumarauki was made to harmonize with the Julian calendar; but from A. D. 1700 with the Gregorian calendar; v. the words sumarauki, hlaupár, mánuðr, vika, etc., Íb. ch. 4, Rb. 6, Fms. i. 67; telja árum, to count the time by years, Vsp. 6; í ári, used adverb., at present, as yet, Ó. H. 41, 42 (in a verse).

II. = Lat. annona, plenty, abundance, fruitfulness; the phrase, friðr ok ár, Fms. vii. 174, Hkr. Yngl. ch. 8–12; ár ok fésæla, Hkr. l. c.; þá var ár urn öll lönd, id.; létu hlaða skip mörg af korni ok annarri gæzku, ok flytja svá ár í Danmörku, Fms. xi. 8, Sks. 323, Fas. i. 526, Hom. 68; gott ár, Eg. 39; blota til árs, Fms. i. 34.

III. the name of the Rune RUNE (a), Skálda 176; in the A. S. and Goth. Runes the j has the name jêr, gêr, according to the Germ. and Engl. pronunciation of this word; vide p. 2, col. 1.

COMPDS: áratal, ársbót.

I. Lat. olim [Ulf. air = παλαί; Engl. yore], used nearly as a substantive followed by a gen., but only in poetry; in the phrase, ár var alda, in times of yore, in principio, Vsp. 3, Hkv. 2. 1: also, ár var þaz (= þat es), the beginning of some of the mythical and heroical poems, Skv. 3. i, Gkv. 1. 1; cp. árdagar.

II. Lat. mane [A. S. ær; O. H. G. êr; cp. Gr. ηρι-, Engl. early, Icel. árla], rare, (the prolonged form árla is freq.); it, however, still exists in the Icel. common phrase, með morgunsárinu (spelt and proncd. in a single word), primo diluculo; elsewhere poet, or in laws, ár of morgin, early of a morning, Hðm. verse 1, Grág. ii. 280; rísa ár, to rise early, Hm. 58, 59; ár né um nætr, Hkv. 2. 34, etc.; í ár, adverb. = early, Ísl. ii. (Hænsa Þór. S.) 161; snemma í ár, Ld. 46, MS., where the Ed. um morgininn í ár, Fas. i. 503: it also sometimes means for ever, svá at ár Hýmir ekki mælti, for an age he did not utter a word, remained silent as if stupefied, Hým. 25, Lex. Poët.; ara þúfu á skaltu ár sitja, Skm. 27; cp. the mod. phrase, ár ok síð og allan tíð, early and late and always. In compds = Lat. matutinus.

f. [A. S. ár; Engl. oar; Swed. åre], an oar, old form of nom., dat., acc. sing. ́r; dat. ́ru or áru, Eb. 60 new Ed., but commonly ár; pl. árar, Eg. 221, 360, Fms. viii. 189, 417: metaph. in the phrases, koma eigi ár sinni fyrir borð, to be under restraint, esp. in a bad sense, of one who cannot run as fast as he likes, Eb. 170; vera á árum e-s = undir ára burði e-s, v. below; draga árar um e-t, to contend about a thing, the metaphor taken from a rowing match, Fær. 159; taka djúpt í árinni, to dip too deep, overdo a thing.

COMPDS: árarblað, áraburðr, áragangr, árakló, áralag, árarhlumr, árarhlutr, árarstubbi, árartog, árartré.