word of the day:

[fox]

ymbscryd.

pronounced -- almost certainly -- ÜMB-scrüd, i.e., EEMB-screed, only round those ees; get your mouth ready to say oo and then say ee instead, without moving your lips.

[have just had bizarre mental soundtrack moment of lauren bacall saying you know how to make a u-umlaut, don't you? you just pucker up your lips and go "eee." definitely didn't need that.]

it seems to mean "covered" or "clothed," as in the sentence ac seo godcundnys is ymbscryd mid þære menniscnysse swa þæt ðær nys naðor gemencgednys ne todal, which -- as near as i can make out -- means "but the divine being is garbed with the human-ness so that no man can distinguish," i.e., Christ is the human incarnation of God and he looks just like a regular person, no mortal can tell he's divine just by looking at him. (does that sound like something aelfric's christmas homily should say?)

but it should, if there were any justice in the world, mean "well and truly fucked (in the figurative sense)." just look at it. and look at how it sounds. i'm-screwed, it says. a whole adjective, just for that. (beo hit so, amen.)

Comments

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

(does that sound like something aelfric's christmas homily should say?)

Sure does.

And do you really need to do all this translation for this paper? Are precise shades of meaning really going to make a difference to your data? From your description of the topic, it sounded to me as though you were mostly going for word lists, not textual exegesis. If that's the case, you could lean pretty heavily on existing translations.

but it should, if there were any justice in the world, mean "well and truly fucked (in the figurative sense)."

*g* One of the first verbs we learned in Greek, and one of the few I still remember, was aporeo, "to be at a loss."

And I like the Lauren Bacall image *g*.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

oh, no, the shades of meaning was just me going off on a tangent. indeed i should be able to lean on existing translations; it's finding the buggers that's proving way more difficult than it really should. but! i now have translations of wulfstan's "sermo lupi ad anglos" and aelfric's "passion of st. edmund," which has inspired me to bag the translation of the christmas homily; late-saxon isn't a problem. it's the early-anglian, early-saxon, early-unknown, indeterminate-anglian, indeterminate-saxon, indeterminate-unknown, late-anglian, and late-unknown that's kicking my ass.

however: must now shift attention to translation of wulf and eadwacer, which i really do need to translate for 10 am tomorrow. :-)

(am deleting nearly-duplicate comment thread. just fyi.)

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love wulf and eadwacer! Beautiful poem. You can sing it to the tune of Tori Amos's "Me and a Gun," too. (Well, you can sing just about any OE tune to either that or "My Favorite Things," but it works very well with the Tori tune.)

Have I pimped my OE verse translation of the Trek-TOS ep "Devil in the Dark" (http://www.geocities.com/ellen_fremedon/Deofole.html) to you, btw?

[mommybird.livejournal.com]

You are a god. I praise you.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

*gratefully inhales the smoke of burnt offerings*Î