Bosworth Toller's

Anglo-Saxon

Dictionary online

æ
þ

ós

  • noun [ masculine ]
Dictionary links
Wright's OE grammar
§61;
a divinity, god, the Anglo-Saxon form of a word whose existence in Gothic is inferred from a passage in Jornandes, 'Gothi proceres suos quasi qui fortuna vincebant non pares homines sed semideos, id est, Anses vocavere.' The Icelandic, which throws out n before s, as the Anglo-Saxon does (cf. Icel. gás: A. S. gós), has áss; pl. æsir, a term which has an application in the opening chapters of the Yngling Saga very similar to that attributed to anses among the Goths: Odin, Thor, and other personages of the Scandinavian mythology are the Æsir. Particularly apparently did the term refer to Thor, so that the proper name Ás-björn is used as the equivalent of Þor-björn. As the first part of Scandinavian proper names it occurs frequently, and it is in the same dependent character that it mostly, if not exclusively, is found in Anglo-Saxon and O. H. German. Thus Ós-beorn, Ós-lác, Ós-wine, Ós-weald preserve the word which is found in Ás-björn, Ás-lákr, Ás-mundr, and this is certainly the independent áss. The O. H. Ger. Ans-gár shews the same word. Whether ós in the sense of god occurs as an independent word is doubtful. It is the name of the Rune RUNE, which in the Runic poem is accompanied by the following verse
Show examples

  • 'Ós byþ ordfruma ǽlcre sprǽce Wísdómes wraðu and witena frófur And eorla gehwam eádnís and tóhyht.' Runic pm. Kmbl. 340,

      5-10; Rún. 4.

    Kemble translates ós by mouth (as if the Latin word had been taken?), but if the verse is old, the reference might be to Woden. Cf. the account of Óðinn in the Yngfinga Saga: þar þóttust Ódins menn eiga ale traust, er hann var, c. 2. Óðinn var göfgastr af öllum, ok af honum námu þeir allir íþróttirnar: því at hann kunni fyrst allar ok þó fiestar. . . . Hann ok hofgoðar hans heita ljóðasmiðir, því at sfi íþrótt hófst af þeim í norðrlöndum, c. 6. See also c. 7, and Salm. Kmbl. p. 192: Saga mé hwá ǽrost bócstafas sette? Ic ðe secge Mercurius ( = Woden) se gygand. Further in Lchdm. iii. 54, in a charm, occurs a genitive pl. ésa :-- Gif hit wǽre ésa gescot, oððe hit wǽre ylfa gescot, oððe hit wǽre hægtessan gescot, nú ic wille ðín helpan. Ðis Ðis ðé tó bóte ésa gescotes, &c. . . . But though on the comparison of other forms, a nom. pl. és might be inferred for Ís, the change of vowel would not occur in the genitive, which should be ósa. Ésa would point to a singular és (cf. ést; Goth. ansts). The meaning however of the word is that given toós . See
      Grmm. D. M. p. 22.
Linked entries
v.  ésa.
Entry information
Citation

Bosworth, Joseph. “ós.” In An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary Online, edited by Thomas Northcote Toller, Christ Sean, and Ondřej Tichy. Prague: Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014. https://bosworthtoller.com/25014.

Checked: 0
Full form

Word-wheel

  • ós, n.

Copyright

All the data provided here are free for any purpose. If you use the data for academic purposes, we ask that you kindly cite us as your source. In case you need a large portion of the dictionary data or you need it in a specific format, let us know through the contact form, we are happy to do custom database dumps for researchers.

How to cite

You can cite the entries of the online version of the dictionary, or you can cite the scanned pages of the original paper editions.

  • To cite the online version of the dictionary, click the icon right under the entry.
  • To cite the scanned paper version of the dictionary, click the "show/hide this scanned page" link under the entry, check the scan and use the citation information right above it.