Re: vocab

From: Brian M. Scott
Message: 10580
Date: 2009-09-06

At 10:14:15 AM on Thursday, September 3, 2009, Schuyler
Himberg wrote:

> what is the norse word for furred beast?

I don't know that there is one. The basic word for 'an
animal' is <dýr>, which seems to exclude birds and snakes; I
don't know whether it would have been applied to any other
reptile, though I believe that in modern Icelandic it can
be. Certainly the animals to which it was most commonly
applied were all furred: the expression <loðin sem dýr>
'shaggy as an animal' is found in the ON translation of the
'Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem' (Letter of Alexander
(the Great) to Aristotle).

Brian

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