Bosworth Toller's

Anglo-Saxon

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toft

  • noun [ masculine ]
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Grammar
toft, A word apparently of Scandinavian origin,
Icel. topt, tuft a piece of ground, messuage, homestead; a place marked out for a house or building; in the special later Icelandic sense a square piece of ground with walls but without roof: Dan. toft an enclosed home-field. It does not occur often in the earliest English, but it is found as the second part of many place-names m districts which were affected by the Danes, v. Taylor's Names and Places. In the Prompt. Parv, toft renders campus; in Piers Plowman it means an elevated piece of ground : I seign a toure on a toft,
    Prol. 14; while later, according to Kenuett, it is' a field where a house or building once stood.' In the following passages it may mean the enclosed ground in which the house stood
Show examples

  • Healf ðæt land æt Súðhám, innur and úttur, on tofte and on crofte,

      Cod. Dip. Kmbl. iii. 317, 7.

  • Nǽfre myntan ne plot ne plóh, ne turf ne toft,

      L. O. 13; Th. i. 184, 7 ; Lchdm. iii. 286, 23. [Ic an
    ] intó ðe túnkirke on Mardingford . v. -acres and áne toft and .ii. acres médwe . . . And míne landseðlen here toftes tó ówen aihte, Cod. Dip. Kmbl. iv. 282, 26-29.

  • Alle míne men fré, and ilk habbe his toft and his metecfi and his metecú. And ic an þe préstes toft into þe kirke fre . . . And ic an Léfquéne fítténe acres and an toft . . . And Alfwold habbe, mid tón þe hé hér hauede, .xvi. acres mid tofte mid alle. Chart. Th. 580,

      6-27. v. Grmm. R. A. 539.
Entry information
Citation

Bosworth, Joseph. “toft.” 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/30678.

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  • toft, n.

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